Was There a “Nude” Cheat Code in the Original Tomb Raider Video Game?
Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends related to video games and whether they are true or false.
VIDEO GAME URBAN LEGEND: There was a “nude” cheat code in the original Tomb Raider video game.
One of the most famous video game characters of all time is Lara Croft, the archaeologist hero of the Tomb Raider series of video games (developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive), which debuted in 1996 for PCs, Sega and Sony PlayStation.
Besides being an awesome hero, Lara Croft also gained a good deal of fame from hormone-driven adolescent (and sometimes older than adolescent) video game fans who liked her physical appearance. This has led to a persistent urban legend – was there a cheat code in the original Tomb Raider game where you could cause Lara Croft to fight in the nude?
Read on to find out!
Basically, no.
However, as I noted above, the original games were released for PCs. Therefore, a group of independent developers made it a hobby of theirs to come up with “patches” that you could add on to the PCs and using those patches, you could make Lara Croft appear nude. These were hosted on a website called nuderaider.com. Neither Core nor Eidos were involved in these patches, and there was no cheat code in the console version of the game. Just patches that you could add on to the PC version of the game.
Eidos eventually got nuderaider.com shut down.
They would even occasionally make fun of the rumors, like once using as an ad for a Tomb Raider game, “Still no nude codes.”
The legend is…
STATUS: False
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future urban legends columns! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com
In the Uk one magazine published a story in an April-dated issue (note: Never trust an exclusive in a magazine with dated April) claiming that the programmers for fun had created a nude cheat and accidently left it in all 3 versions. To use the cheat a player had to tap a rhythm into a controller in port 2 and the player using port 1 had to make Lara dance to it triggering a disco cutscene after which Lara (and at least one male character) would be nude and the animals would no longer attack Lara.
(Note -doing this would be too much work for it to be real).
The article claimed the magazine staff had managed to do the cheat using the Spice Girl’s Wannabe.
For years afterward, this fake cheat was repeated as a legend (mentioning the Spice Girls but forgetting the need for 2 controllers)