Gamer who's loved Tomb Raider since childhood grows videogame collection to record level
An avid Tomb Raider player is celebrating the 30th anniversary of her favourite videogame by claiming a world record.
Amy Dyson (UK) officially owns the world’s largest collection of Tomb Raider videogames with a whopping 291 in her possession.
Amy owns Tomb Raider games in lots of different languages from all around the world, and she has the same game multiple times for all different consoles too, including Game Boy, PlayStation, Xbox and PC.
And who can blame her for being so obsessed – Lara Croft is the ultimate videogame heroine!
Amy has been a Lara fan since she was a child.
She told us: “I first started playing Tomb Raider round about age six, and it was just absolutely fascinating that there was a game that had a female protagonist and she was a strong character.
“It was the puzzle solving and this divide between the type of games that my brother played and one that felt uniquely made for me.”
Amy’s fascination only grew when, in 2001, Angelina Jolie pulled on her cargo shorts to become the iconic character for feature film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
She explained: “When the Angelina Jolie film came out, I remember there were these collectible figures but we couldn’t afford them, so I never got to purchase anything.
“Then when I was in uni, I saw the world record Tomb Raider collection and I was pointing things out in the video, saying ‘I remember that’ and ‘I remember this’.
“It brough back this nostalgia, and for a birthday present someone bought me loads of comics and said to me, ‘This is the beginning of your collection, I want you to do this’.
“And it just kind of snowballed from there.”
Find more gaming news in our dedicated section.
Amy’s collection includes much more than just videogames. As she gave us a tour, she showed us her posters, figurines, and even a pair of custom high heels she made herself.
After a while, Amy says she began documenting her collection on Instagram and found a whole community of fans just like her.
Through that, Amy, who even has a few tattoos dedicated to her love of the iconic character, helped a previous record holder with their application for the largest videogame collection to mark the 20th anniversary of Tomb Raider.
And she figured there was no better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary than by attempting to claim the record for herself.
With around 100 games in her collection then, she challenged herself to gather as many as she could get her hands on.
Before long, she had enough to beat the previous record of 215 set by Alejandro Cambronero Albaladejo (Spain) in 2017.
And her collection is growing, with her even unboxing new games and awaiting more deliveries while we were there filming with her.
Read about more record-breaking collections in our dedicated section.
Amy’s games are so important to her.
She has Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a debilitating condition that can cause her to experience paralysis, brain fog, ticks and tremors.
She told us: “Tomb Raider always helps me escape. So, any time I’m having a tick attack or I don’t feel well and I have to take a day off work, I’ll immediately go back to Tomb Raider because it helps me refresh my brain.
“It’s something I’m familiar with so it can just refunction the thought pattern.”
One of the most exciting things to come from starting her collection was getting to play a beta test section of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which earned her a credit on the final game.
As the credits roll, you can see “Amy D Tomb Raider collector” – her old fan site – under a list titled “Thank you to our Official Tomb Raider Fansites, and the hard-working webmasters who run them.”
So cool!
The overall largest collection of Tomb Raider memorabilia belongs to Rodrigo Martín Santos (Spain) and consists of 3,050 distinct items as of 26 September 2016.