Site History
This site began as Croft Storm began on 22.12.02, pretty much just because I was bored. It was just about as basic as sites come, with just some cheats, quizzes and images. It turned out to be a bad time for Tomb Raider sites, with both the movie Cradle of Life and the game Angel of Darkness receiving terrible reviews and most fans losing their interest in the franchise. Because of this the site ran quite slowly for the first two years, growing only slightly in both content and popularity.
It was on the sites second anniversairy, 22.12.04 when the site began to become something different. I'd recently become very interested in Flash, and relaunched the site as Croft Storm Nova with a lot of very original new Flash sections. In February 2005 I bought the domain Croftstorm.net (as .com had been taken). Throughout the majority of that year I worked on my Flash, which resulted in my first major Tomb Raider Flash game, Onslaught (and spin-off Raider Rush). Both of these games brought a few more people into the site.
In late 2005 I began on a new idea which was to let people add their own content to the site. From this idea I created instant submission for every section of the site, so people could add their own work instantly. For the sites third anniversairy, 22.12.05, I took this further by creating a login system for the site so people could have their own accounts and earn credits for their work in the form of Raider Points.
Over the next few months I built up the system, and with help from some great submissions by members the site grew bigger than ever. In March I added the Image Gallery which soon grew into one of the largest on the net, thanks to help from several members. April 7th 2006 saw the release of the brilliant Tomb Raider Legend which not only marked a triumphant return for Tomb Raider but also a huge boost in popularity for the site, with the daily hits topping 500 on several occasions.
On 05.06.06 I opened Screenshots, the final main section of the site. The next few months were then spent working on my second major Tomb Raider Flash entitled Wrath of Osiris, released on 01.07.06. As a site exclusive the game brought in a lot more visits, the member total reaching 100 shortly afterwards. The site saw more and more visitors as 2006 came to the end, with thousands of people coming for the release of my final Tomb Raider Flash game Curse of Osiris, as well as a new section for people to show their own levels for the game. By the end of the year the site was receiving over 200 times as many visitors as at the end of 2005, making by far the most successful year so far.
To start the new year off I revamped the site's look to match the Anniversary game and began on the biggest update of the site to date. After months of work I finally relaunched the site as Raider Storm with a new look, new features such as Raiding Partners and most of the site recoded from scratch. With this new foundation in place Raider Storm will continue to grow as one of the biggest Tomb Raider fansites in the world.
Last updated 22.09.08
Past Front Pages
11.08.07, V4.0
14.01.07, V3.8
25.11.06, V3.6
13.06.06, V3.4
19.04.06, V3.2
23.12.05, V3.0
01.10.05, V2.6
04.07.05, V2.3
10.04.05, V2.1
05.10.03, V1.6
27.05.03, V1.3
15.03.03, V1.0
