I’m happy to report that with the help of Stella’s walkthrough, I have caught up to the point in Tomb Raider I that I abandoned it years ago. After about an hour on the Fire Torch room, I finally got through it.

Lots of annoyances. I’m playing it on my laptop, and there are key combinations that are needed by the game that just make my laptop beep.

And of course, this is a Windows 95 game, which is, at best, flakey under XP. In particular, the game freezes at certain points, and the only way out is to kill the instance of the game, start again, and reload the previous saved game.

Unfortunately, these freezes come:

• At the Eidos splash screen
• When the title page fades from white to colour
• When the title command sprites launch into orbit
• At the beginning and ends of levels
• When saving or loading games
• Before and after cut scenes

So I’m really having to keep on my toes and cross my fingers, and save frequently.

Last time I was playing this, I was under the impression that the Fire Torch Room was some key pin at the very end of the came. I was sadly mistaken: it’s pretty much exactly halfway through.

So, now that I’ve got this far with the walkthrough, shall I abandon it and play the game for myself? … Probably not…