London: A feminist icon, a virtual blow-up doll, the sixth Spice Girl, a cyberbabe, an ambassador for Britain, or a distorted male fantasy? Lara Croft, who turns 20 today, has been described as all of these.
Born at the height of Britpop, the female protagonist of computer game Tomb Raider became one of the pillars of Cool Britannia – but also provoked the ire of feminists who criticised her sexualised image.
Her journey took in two Hollywood films, numerous magazine covers and advertising campaigns but began in the comparatively unglamorous English city of Derby.
Tomb Raider was created by a small team of people working for Core Design, a video game developer founded in the city in 1988.
"The story goes that within the industry it wasn't easy to sell a female heroine," says Heather Gibson, one of the six developers who created the original game.
"Up until then they were quite masculine characters because your main market was men or boys."
The character was thought up by one of Heather's colleagues, Toby Gard, who has cited the comic character Tank Girl and musician Neneh Cherry as inspirations.
"He wanted a strong female character as the lead role," says Gibson.
"It was pooh-poohed in its very original form but Toby just stuck with it."
The game was launched on 25 October 1996 – three months after Spice Girls released their debut single Wannabe.
"It's not coincidence that it was that sort of time," says Iain Simons, director of the National Videogame Foundation and the GameCity festival.
"I think she (Lara Croft) was part of a broader movement towards a new kind of powerful feminism that came about."
While the game's developers expected it to appeal to men and boys, it found an unexpected audience among women and girls.
In fact, early data from parent company Eidos suggested that 40 per cent of the early players were female.
Among these was Meagan Marie, who was 12 when the first game was released.
"The initial attraction to the game was feeling represented," she says.
"It was really cool to see this beautiful woman who was so powerful and in control."
Ms Marie, who has written an official book – 20 Years of Tomb Raider - to mark the anniversary, says that Lara inspired her to push herself.
"That's one of the reoccurring things that I hear, especially with women specifically in my age range, in their early 30s," she says.
"I know so many women who talked about wanting to be an archaeologist or wanting to go into these other fields because Lara inspired them."
Ms Marie says there was a "perfect storm" when Lara popped up into public consciousness.
"She was a female protagonist and there weren't many," she said.
"It was also really at the time where Girl Power was starting to gain movement because of the Spice Girls."
The game was originally launched on the Sega Saturn but it really took off when released on the more popular PlayStation the following month.
Its lead character soon became ubiquitous, gracing not just the covers of videogames magazines but lifestyle magazines too.
Brands used her to endorse their products, with notable adverts including Lucozade, Seat cars and Visa.
The band U2 used the character during their PopMart tour in 1997, where she appeared on stage in custom footage broadcast across a massive screen.
Lara also had a stab at becoming a pop singer herself and Rhona Mitra, the official Lara Croft model for 1997-8, recorded two whole albums with Dave Stewart, best known for being one-half of Eurythmics.