Tomb Raider II

Tomb Raider II
System(s): Sega Saturn
Publisher: Eidos Interactive
Developer: Core Design
Planned release date(s): 1997
Genre: Action
Number of players: 1

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Tomb Raider II is the sequel to Tomb Raider, and was released for the PlayStation console and Windows PCs in 1997. For a good chunk of its development, a Sega Saturn release was also planned, but by May 1997 this port had been shelved due to "technical issues".

Tomb Raider II is one of the more notorious Saturn absentees, as the game was eagerly awaited by the gaming press and went onto become a best seller, particularly in the United Kingdom. The original Tomb Raider had been designed with the Saturn in mind, debuting before the PlayStation release in many territories and being adopted by Sega as a key selling point for the system, however Core Design claimed that upgrades to the game engine reportedly led to a Saturn port becoming unfeasible in Eidos Interactive's given time frame.

Despite these comments, the true reasons for cancellation are not fully understood - rumours also suggest that Sony signed an exclusivity contract with Eidos (although this conflicts with a reported Nintendo 64 version which also did not materialise), or that Eidos dropped the project when it backed away from the Saturn towards the end of 1997.

The cancelled Saturn version still appears to have affected Tomb Raider II's development, as similar to the original, levels are built with quad-based geometry in mind (something that would not be resolved until the game's sequel, Tomb Raider III: The Adventures of Lara Croft, which also skipped the Saturn).