Shoot 'em up: Royal Mail to celebrate video game icons

Royal Mail is rolling back the years to commemorate the pioneers of the UK video games industry with the launch of a new set of 12 stamps featuring classics such as Tomb Raider, Wipeout and Worms.

The collection includes four stamps presented in a “miniature-sheet”, depicting everyone’s favourite athletic English archaeologist Lara Croft. The character, created by a team at British developer Core Design, has been rummaging around ancient tombs and hazardous ruins across the world since 1996.

Croft holds six Guinness World Records, including for the most magazine covers for a video game character and for the largest number of people dressed as a character. She was also among the first video game characters to be successfully adapted to film, played by Angelina Jolie twice and Alicia Vikander in the 2018 reboot.

Other video games games in the 12-set collection include space combat title Elite, published by Acornsoft in 1984; adventure and puzzle series Dizzy, released by Codemasters in 1987; “God game” Populous, developed by Bullfrog Productions in 1989; puzzle-platformer Lemmings, developed by DMA Design [no relation to the trade body] in 1991 and toy car game Micro Machines, developed by Codemasters in the same year.

Royal Mail head of stamp strategy Philip Parker said: “The UK has been at the forefront of the video games industry for decades. In the Eighties and Nineties young designers grappled with coding on the new microcomputers and set the template for the industry with iconic games. We celebrate some of their landmark creations on stamps.”

Royal Mail worked with gaming trade body UK Interactive Entertainment on the series. Its chief executive Dr Jo Twist added: “This collection celebrates a selection of the great British video games that have helped define both the national and global development scene over decades.