Believe it or not, everyone's favorite tomb raiding video game vixen, Lara Croft, graced us with her presence 15 years ago and has become known as one of the largest gaming icons of all time. In October 1996, Eidos Interactive released Tomb Raider to the Sega Saturn with MS-DOS and PlayStation versions following shortly thereafter (that hardware feels like eons ago).

Tomb Raider went on to sell eight million copies worldwide and since then, we have seen eight more title games (the first six by Core Design and the latest three by Crystal Dynamics with a fourth on the way). But not only has Ms. Croft been busy in our gaming consoles, she holds two films on her resume that have grossed over 400-million dollars worldwide.

In honor of the past 15 years, Crystal Dynamics plans to curate a unique digital exhibition that will host eight original pieces of art created by a selection of esteemed artists. Throughout the month, starting on October 4th, pieces of the exhibit will slowly be revealed up until the end. These pieces of art will be created to showcase the new vision for Lara Croft in anticipation of the new Tomb Raider game with a different artistic style unique to each artist.

Karl Stewart, global brand director of Crystal Dynamics, spoke about how excited he is about this exhibition:

“This is the perfect opportunity to celebrate Tomb Raider’s history by looking at Lara’s promising future… We can’t wait to share each artist’s unique interpretation of what it means to be Lara Croft.”

The first piece was created by Andy Park, who was an artist on the original Tomb Raider comic book series. The final piece will be by Toby Gard, creator of the Tomb Raider series. All of the art may be viewed at tombraider.com/15 in collaboration with Hiptic.com.

Check out Andy Park's contribution to the 15th Anniversary Exhibition below (click the image to enlarge):

Pretty amazing, right? A series of events will also be held this month in honor of the big anniversary, including a signing by artists at the New York Comic-Con on October 14. As a finale hurrah to the event, a limited selection of T-shirts and posters will be available to purchase from The Nerd Machine with a portion of the proceeds benefiting Child's Play charity.

The entire Tomb Raider franchise to date has sold 35 million copies worldwide and the series looks to return strong next year with the series reboot. We've seen the amazingly gorgeous trailer for Tomb Raider from earlier this year (check out how it was made) and our first-look gameplay demo with Tomb Raider had us excited at E3. Next Fall can't come soon enough!

Let's hear your fondest memories of the Tomb Raider franchise and whether or not you are looking forward to Tomb Raider, which will come out in the Fall of 2012!

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