From Business Wire (July 15, 1998)

Business and Entertainment Editors
ROCKLIN, Calif.--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)

Essence of Tomb Raider II Star Is Focus of Collectible Book on Nationwide Store Shelves Now

Prima Games, the world's leading creator of computer game strategy guides, and Eidos Interactive, a worldwide developer and publisher of interactive entertainment products, have collaborated to create and publish Lara's Book: Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider Phenomenon. Packed with images, photographs and strategies, this collectible "coffee table" book is the ultimate guide to today's pop culture icon Lara Croft, the sexy, take-charge star of the wildly successful Tomb Raider PC and PlayStation game franchise. The book hit stores earlier this week.

Lara's Book features thoughts and a story by famed author Douglas Coupland, a cyberworld observer and pop culture guru whose prophetically-titled first novel, Generation X, brought a new term into the 20th century vernacular. The Vancouver, B.C.-based Coupland has written five subsequent books, Shampoo Planet, Polaroids from the Dead, Life After God, Microserfs and his newest novel Girlfriend in a Coma (released in April by HarperCollins). "Harold Adams Innes, a media critic from the 1960s said, 'We become what we behold.' Well, at the moment there are certainly millions of people out there beholding Lara," explains Coupland.

"I'm darn curious to see what these people will become and I think this book is an exploration of that."

Coupland also graces Lara's Book with outrageous original fiction in the form of an action/adventure comic starring Lara Croft. The story "Air Tibet" proves that the Lara legend is actively creating itself outside the confines of the digital gaming world. The question Coupland, Eidos and Prima wonder is "Where will she go next?" The limited-edition Lara's Book also has practical applications for hard-core gamers. Prima provides exclusive, original strategies for Tomb Raider Gold, a new compilation of the original Tomb Raider with four additional never-before-seen levels. The book also contains hints and quick walkthroughs for both Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider II.

Intended to reach beyond gamers, the book offers a quirky look at all aspects of the Lara Croft phenomenon. The handsomely-bound work, with an elegant paper matte cover, includes original Tomb Raider fiction, an interview, images and photographs on the evolution of Lara Croft. Through his featured comments, Coupland attempts to answer the question why are men and women so enamored with Lara.

"The demand for a coffee table ode to Lara is further proof that she is too much a force of nature to be contained within the game world," explains Mike McGarvey, COO, Eidos Interactive. "We're thrilled to be working with a writer as gifted as Douglas since he has the insight to isolate the secrets of the Lara Croft phenomenon." "Lara Croft demands excellence in all things. We feel we've captured her spirit of adventure, risk and sophistication within the pages of Lara's Book. The end result is, we feel, as vivid and powerful as Lara is herself," said Debra Kempker, publisher of Prima Games.

Coupland is enamored with Lara Croft as a virtual celebrity and peppers Lara's Book with a myriad of comments on her influence on society. "Lara Croft is the most modern person on Earth," Coupland believes. "She represents the radical new shift in human existence -- humanity's next phase where we download ourselves entirely into silicon."

"Lara is simply a Valentine from the future," Coupland continues. "Her body is central to her existence and yet she doesn't really have a body; this drives people nuts, but it certainly doesn't drive them away. Lara is always a few feet ahead of you -- she exists only in the future tense. Wherever you're going, she's already there."

The Lara Croft story began in 1996 with the release of Eidos Interactive's Tomb Raider, a best-selling PC, PlayStation and SEGA Saturn video game, and grew with the November 1997 release of Tomb Raider II for the PC and PlayStation. Since the release of the original Tomb Raider, Lara Croft has become a worldwide celebrity by gracing the cover of more than 75 magazines worldwide.

Prima Games (www.primagames.com) is the world's leading publisher of strategy guides for computer and console games, now with more than fifteen million strategy guides in print. Renowned for its consistently high quality, the Rocklin-based company has captured the hearts and minds of game players as "The Most Trusted Name in Games(TM)" and continues to dominate the field it created in 1990. Founded in 1984, Prima Publishing, the parent of Prima Games, has four divisions including Games, Lifestyles, Health, and Prima-Tech, and offices in the United States and United Kingdom.

Eidos Interactive, Inc. is a leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment products for the PC, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64 as well as the Internet. Eidos Interactive is part of London-based Eidos plc (NASDAQ:EIDSY), with additional offices in San Francisco, Paris and Hamburg, Germany. Eidos plc also includes Eidos Technologies, a software-based video compression company, Glassworks, a state-of-the-art post production facility specializing in digital effects and video editing for the television and advertising industries, and Eidoscope, an interactive marketing and web site design firm. More information on Eidos Interactive's line of products can be found on the Internet at http://www.eidosinteractive.com.

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CONTACT: Prima Games Julie Asbury, 916/632-4400 julie@primapub.com or Faiola Davis Public Relations Eric Lindbom/Sara Faiola, 213/933-4959 fdpr1@aol.com

KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED ENTERTAINMENT PUBLISHING PRODUCT