Core Design

Core Design Limited was a British video game developer based in Derby. Founded in May 1988 by former Gremlin Graphics employees, it originally bore the name Megabrite until rebranding as Core Design in October the same year. The company was acquired by umbrella company CentreGold in December 1994, which in turn was acquired by Eidos Interactive in April 1996.

Core was best known for their work on the largely successful Tomb Raider franchise, which began in 1996 with the first game created by Toby Gard and Paul Douglas (the former of whom being the creator of Lara Croft), with numerous sequels being spawned from 1997 to 2003. The failure of the sixth game, The Angel of Darkness, caused Eidos to change development of future Tomb Raider games from Core to another Eidos-owned studio Crystal Dynamics. In May 2006, the Core Design personnel and assets were acquired by Rebellion Developments (though Eidos retained the ownership to the Core brand and IPs including Tomb Raider), and the company became Rebellion (Derby) Ltd, which was then shut down in March 2010.

To honour Core's greatest achievement, Lara Croft, the town of Derby named a road after her, "Lara Croft Way".

History
Based in the city of Derby, England, Core Design was founded in 1988 by Chris Shrigley, Andy Green, Rob Toone, Terry Lloyd, Simon Phipps, Dave Pridmore, Jeremy Heath-Smith, Kevin Norburn and Greg Holmes. Most were former employees of Gremlin Graphics. The studio was part of distribution company CentreGold when it was acquired by Eidos Interactive in 1996. Heath-Smith regarded the acquisition as a relief, commenting, "The funding of development is so expensive that I doubt we could have continued to fund ourselves as an independent company." Eidos subsequently sold most of CentreGold, but retained U.S. Gold, the owners of Core Design.

Games

 * Action Fighter (1988)
 * Rick Dangerous (1989)
 * Rick Dangerous 2 (1990)
 * Chuck Rock (1991)
 * Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck (1992)
 * Asterix and the Great Rescue (1993)
 * Asterix and the Power of the Gods (1995)
 * Shellshock (1995)
 * Tomb Raider (1996)
 * Fighting Force (1997)
 * Tomb Raider II (1997)
 * Ninja: Shadow of Darkness (1998)
 * Tomb Raider III (1998)
 * Fighting Force 2 (1999)
 * Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999)
 * Tomb Raider Chronicles (2000)
 * Herdy Gerdy (2002)
 * Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (2003)
 * Smart Bomb (2005)
 * Free Running (2007)