This time around Lara's attention has been brought to a little item called "The Nightmare Stone". Professor Igor Bowmane, working at the Ancient Artifact department at the University of Moscow, has told Lara that this stone contains the evils of the god Quaxet, who was locked into the stone years and years ago. The Professor has been in touch with a man named Illiat, who has set out to search for the stone. Things have started to become a little rough, however, as certain groups have inquired concerning the whereabouts of the stone, and it seems as if some trouble might be brewing. Lara heads out to see what's the latest word on the stone, only to discover that the camp setup has been demolished. Footsteps lead into the nearby temple, and Lara takes it upon herself to enter in and investigate the situation.

Using the Game Boy Color hardware, Core Design has been able to design one of the better-looking titles to coming along on the machine. There are a number of different environments with interesting backdrops and varying locations as you progress. What's most impressive, though, is definitely the animation for not only the game in general, but Lara herself. All of her movements are packed full of individual animations, and it all flows together very smoothly. And yes, as expected, there are even a couple frames of animation reserved for Lara's overly large chest area.

Music in most GBC titles are usually nothing spectacular, but most of the time you expect that there is at least something to accompany you while playing. Tomb Raider, however, is mostly dead silent the entire time. There are sound effects when you fire a weapon, an enemy is approaching and attacking or pick up an item, but the only music that occurred was during the game's cut-scenes (that use still images from what would otherwise be FMV) and for the first few seconds after you load your game. And the odd part is, the music that does play after loading is actually nicely done. I can see it being atmospheric by leaving out the music, but having it play at least once and a while would have been nice; the total dead silence is a bit annoying.

Controlling for Lara is dead on. Sometimes it was a bit hard to get down from a ladder that didn't immediately connect to the ground, but otherwise I had absolutely no complaints in this department. Jumping, shooting - I could not find a single thing wrong.

With all the milking that has been done with the Tomb Raider franchise on the main home consoles, it's surprising to see how well the GBC version has turned out. Let's hope that this points to a promising future for the franchise in the future, and the inevitable sequel that is bound to follow soon enough.