GUNS AND GRAPPLE

I first became a fan of the Tomb Raider series when I was just four years old when my sister got the Tomb Raider Trilogy box set, however I wasn’t allowed to play the game so I got given Tomb Raider; The Last Revelation which had only just been released. I remember being fantastic at the first training level as young Lara and always remembered the script and the golden skulls. However I was also too scared of going any further into the game as I was very young at the time and it was a time level.

I loved the movies also, and I still got my VHS copy of it on the shelf in the corner of my room. I thought that Angelina Jolie was absolutely fantastic and she managed to pull off a differcult role.

I played the Tomb Raider games and watched the movies however I didn’t become a big Tomb Raider fan until 2006 when my brother gave me a copy of Tomb Raider Legend for XBOX. I stayed up all night trying to get past the scaffolding on the tall buildings in Japan which on almost every single try ended up with Lara screaming in my ear, doh. The game was brilliant and there was some amazing voice acting from Keeley Hawes who was the voice of Lara and Kath Soucie who was Amanda.

The project first began in late 2007 when I was on holiday. I knew that an upcoming project at my school was to make a website. I had several ideas which included a Doctor Who website and a Torchwood Website however these both belong to the BBC and I didn’t have copyright. What I did have was a copy of the Official Tomb Raider Website Kit from Tomb Raider Legend which included a series of pictures and copyright.

The first draft on the website, I did at school, however with no html knowledge this looked nothing liked the plan. I decided that I wanted to keep the website after the project, and if I finished the site at school I wouldn’t be able to keep it after a few weeks.

After the school project I decided to make my website at home. This was harder to make time for it since there wasn’t an hour I could devout myself to every week if I couldn’t get any time free at home. The site was named Tomb Raider Fantasy, however I later realised another website with the same name. You should check it out, it’s a great site!

I was writing a story for my site at the same time called “Guns and Grapple” and after a few hours of thinking of a new name I realised that the title was a perfect match.

For a few weeks the site drove me insane since I couldn’t find a good host and it was really difficult finding a template for the site, so I chose to focus on making a magazine that would be available to download from Katie’s Tomb Raider Forum, Eidos’ Official Forums and others.

It wasn’t until I was on the six weeks holidays that I decided to pursue my original dream of owning a site again. I found webs.com when I was looking at Stella’s Link Directory. I did some research on the host and also on Geocities. After a while I made my decision to go for webs.com for the amount of extras and help it gives on web design.

On October 30^th I released my site on the internet. I hope you enjoy it.

There are so many people I wouldn’t be able to do this website without their help, so I made a page dedicated to them. Click here!