The impact of a female heroine in the video game industry

It was the most anticipated evolution in game play when Lara Croft's Tomb Raider arrived on Playstation between 1996 and 1998.  Video games primary audience was geared for male players so 

it was very important for Tomb Raider, with a female lead character, to exceed all success potential.

Lara became a modern day hero with her new movements in Tomb Raider as she lead the video game industry into a new era of game play with her ability to maneuver like no other first person game prior to her arrival.  Lara was a pioneer, a rebel, a rough rider...she had outlaw qualities as well as upstanding role model characteristics when she got her way.

Lara had a home in the game but her home was her training course to prep the gamer and their controller with never before combination of moves.  The motions Lara introduced was running jumping and grabbing edges; she had the ability to hang from the edge and 'shimmy' left or right and upon command and learning how not to fall, you could make her pull herself up onto the rock or whatever she may be climbing.  These motions were unheard of, as well as pulling guns out of your holster while running, jumping and aiming at your opponent and so much more.

Lara was truly a famed adventurer and she didn't have good or bad side as she served her needs to raid tombs and get treasures at her own, and at times others expense.  She was a loner, a ranger, a wanderer and possessed absolutely no fear of the uncivilized frontiers and territories she explored and conquered.

As Lance Eaton mentions in the assigned lecture,

"We often see the cowboy in certain lights or there is certain things he is suppose to do.  He is often a man who brings order and that is often order to uncivilized places.  The cowboy is often out in the west in a place that has no rules and he is there to bring some order.  It doesn't mean he is there to bring laws; it doesn't mean he is there to bring government but he is there bring order to an uncivilized place.  But he is often a man that escapes order rather gets away from civilization.  So a cowboy straddles this line between civilized  and uncivilized." (L Eaton, The Cowboy and Western in Popular Culture).  

Lara was designed to be a cowboy heroine for the video game industry, gamers, for the introduction of new game play, as well as a beautiful never before seen type of new frontier, in the depths of tombs.  Tomb Raider and Lara Croft paved the way for the development of video games overall.  Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Red Dead soon followed suit and developed similar fashion game play.  Lara Croft's legacy is still developed today with new installments consistently premiering and still just as anxiously awaited by fans old and new thrill seekers.