wanted to keep it how they felt it should sound, which was quite right. My job was to bring their character to life". According to Blond, she spent four to five hours recording the voice for Lara including the grunts, cries and other effort and death sounds. A different account attributes these sounds to Gibson, Core Design's PR Manager Suzie Hamilton, and sound designer Martin Iveson whose voice pitch was made higher. Blond would not return for any subsequent entries. In a 2011 interview Blond stated that her departure was due to disagreeing with "some things" within Core Design and Eidos, but five years later she said that she was asked to reprise her role but had to decline due to other commitments. She gave permission for her effort voice work to be reused while the character's dialogue would be voiced by Judith Gibbins. Release and versions Tomb Raider was first confirmed in 1995, although details were kept scarce by the developers. There was little attention from the press until a demo was run at the 1996 Electronic Entertainment Expo, causing the press and public to pay more attention. There was a huge amount of publicity, much of which did not involve the Core Design team at all, which prompted mixed feelings. While the scale of the game's eventual popularity was not in the team's minds, its strong reception at gaming events hinted that it would be a success. To help promote the game, Eidos hired models to portray Lara Croft at trade events. They first hired Natalie Cook, but apparently due to her unsuitability with Eidos's cross-media plans for the character, she was replaced with Rhona Mitra in 1997. Mitra served as Lara's model until 1998. The game was first released for Saturn in Europe on 25 October 1996. In North America, the Saturn, PlayStation and MS-DOS versions were released simultaneously on 14 November. In Europe, the PlayStation and MS-DOS versions were released on 22 November. Future PC patches allowed the game to work on Windows 95. The PC version was released on Steam on 29 November 2012. The PlayStation and Saturn versions were also published in Japan in 1997 by Victor Interactive Software under the name Tomb Raiders. The Saturn version was released on 14 January, while the PlayStation version came on 14 February. The PlayStation version was re-released for the PlayStation Network in North America in August