Max Payne celebrates twentieth birthday
July 23 marks the 20th anniversary of Max Payne’s first appearance in a video game. The character has starred in three renowned games and one movie. In total, it is estimated that more than 11 million copies of Max Payne games have been sold.
In celebration of the iconic character’s 20th anniversary, creator Sam Lake and voice actor James McCaffrey share a thank you video on twitter. Lake, the stage name of Finnish Sami Antero Järvi, came up with Max Payne as creative director at Remedy Entertainment from Helsinki. The studio also used his likeness for the first iteration of the character in 2001’s Max Payne. Initially, sales were a bit disappointing. Still, Take-Two Interactive bought the rights to Remedy shortly after its release. Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two, subsequently made the much more successful console versions of the game.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne from 2003 was once again made by Remedy Entertainment, this time fully published by Rockstar Games. Actor Timothy Gibbs’ appearance was used for the 2003 game, while McCaffrey lent his voice and Lake wrote the story. Despite the almost unanimous praise for the game, the sales figures were disappointing. Partly for this reason, it remained silent around the franchise for years.
That was until Max Payne 3 was announced for release in 2009. This time Rockstar completely took over from Remedy. McCaffrey modeled for Max and once again provided the voice of the cynical detective, while Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser took over the story. Max Payne 3 was delayed time and again, finally coming out more than two years after its original release date in 2012. History seemed to repeat itself; Max Payne 3 received very positive reviews, but did not sell as expected. For now, part three is the last full game in the franchise. So far there is no indication that a fourth part is in the works.
The Max Payne franchise is known for its use of bullet-time, bombastic action sequences and dark detective stories with interfaces to the neo-noir genre. In each of the games, the New York cop stumbles upon major conspiracies within organized crime. Payne’s tragic past also haunts him; his wife and daughter were murdered by criminals. In addition to the shooter elements, the psyche of the character is often central to the Max Payne games.
In 2008, all those elements were transformed into a movie called Max Payne, with Mark Wahlberg as the character. The film’s story was loosely based on the first installment of the franchise. The film was criticized for a variety of reasons; Max Payne has a score of 16 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 31 on Metascore.