Max Payne is a BAFTA award winning 3rd-person shooter video game developed by the Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment, produced by 3D Realms and published by Gathering of Developers in July 2001 for Windows. Ports created later in the year for the Xbox, PlayStation two and the GameBoy Advance were published by Rockstar Games. A Macintosh port was published in July 2002 by MacSoft in North America and by Feral Interactive in the rest of the world. 

There were plans for a Dreamcast version of Max Payne, but they were canceled due to the discontinuation of the console. The game was re-released on April 29, 2009 as a downloadable game in the Xbox Originals program for the Xbox 360.

The game features a gritty film noir style and uses graphic novel panels (with voice-overs) in place of cutscenes to narrate the game. Max Payne is heavily influenced by the Hong Kong action cinema genre, particularly the work of director John Woo, as well as hard-boiled detective novels by authors like Mickey Spillane. The game contains many allusions to Norse mythology, particularly the myth of Ragnarök, and several of the names used in the game are those of the Norse gods and mythos.

Max Payne received very positive reviews from critics and was praised for its exciting gunplay and use of noir storytelling devices. As of March 12, 2008, the Max Payne franchise has sold over seven million copies according to Take-2 Interactive.