Other : Eidos TV
In its own words, Eidos TV was a "ground-breaking new interactive entertainment network. Using cutting-edge web technology and creative content guaranteed to rattle your senses, Eidos TV delivers fresh, dynamic multimedia treatments of the most popular Eidos titles in a revolutionary way never before seen on-line. Continuously updated music videos, interactive game shows, streaming video, public access and contents will keep you coming back to this one-of-a-kind site."
It was launched sometime around October 1998 and could be accessed from the US Eidos Interactive website in the header links. To be able to view it, you needed the Shockwave browser plug-in, as it is a Flash website. Sadly, ETV didn't appear to last very long as by the end 1999, you can no longer find a link to it from the homepage, but you could, by the looks of it, still access the page if you knew where you were going. Whether it was updated or not though is uncertain.
There is an opening animation whilst navigation bars appear along the top. Games promoted on ETV were Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy 7, 007, Ninja and Thief, and there were videos, music, games and give-aways, as well as fansite spotlights. Chosen sites were given $50 to spend in the Eidos Store. Requirements for entries were Fan Art, Fan Sites, and story completions for Never Ending Saga, and would be submitted in the 'Public Access Channel'.
For information about the Tomb Raider things shown, well, fansite 'Lara's Temple' wrote on Saturday 17th October 1998 that there was an exclusive Lara Slider Puzzle game. Completing it would award players an exclusive Lara Croft wallpaper. The Slider game changed artwork every 2 weeks and a leaderboard, listing the 10 fastest completion times, would be revealed. You can still see the page today, with a browser Flash plug-in, but many of the links no longer work - this is because they seem to link to Flash files that are no longer there. The links along the top of the ETV homepage lead to:
Under Music, there are 5 choices: 'FFVII Avalanche Overture', 'Tomb Raider: Globe Trotting with Lara', 'Tomb Raider: Lara the Spy', 'FF7: Trip-n-Ride with Cloud Strife', 'Ninja: The Story of Ninja' and 'Thief: Shades of Darkness'. Under Games, there are 3 choices: 'Hunt For Lara', 'FFVII: Superquiz', and 'Slider Puzzle'. Under Public Access, there are 5 choices: 'Tomb Raider Featured Sites', 'Tomb Raider Art Gallery', 'Never Ending Saga', 'Featured Sites' and 'Art Gallery'. You can play the 'Hunt For Lara' game, either by downloading it from the web archive of ETV, or you can find it on Archive.org with three other Eidos Shockwave games along with the means to play it.
Other pages: ETV Gear Up | Slider Puzzle Best Times Leaderboard Web Art |
Sources:
- TR3 US PSX Manual - https://www.tombraiders.net/stella/files/manuals/TR3/Tomb_Raider_3_PSX.pdf
- Lara's Temple - http://web.archive.org/web/20010304191932fw_/http://temple.ctimes.net/october.html
- Fansite Submission - http://web.archive.org/web/19980630155450/http://www.eidosinteractive.com:80/new.html
- Eidos TV Site - http://web.archive.org/web/20011110030501/http://www.eidosinteractive.com/gss/legacy/etv/etv.html (Will need Flash Plugin)
- Web Archive of Hunt for Lara - http://web.archive.org/web/20020301000000*/http://www.eidosinteractive.com:80/gss/legacy/etv/games/hunt.dcr
- Archive.org Submission - https://archive.org/details/eidos-shockwave-webgames