Red Dead Revolver is a 2004 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. It is the first entry in the Red Dead series, and was released for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in May 2004. Set in the 1880s, during the American frontier, the single-player story follows bounty hunter Red Harlow's quest for revenge after the murder of his parents. A local multiplayer mode allows up to four players to face off against each other or AI-controlled bots in free-for-all battles.
Rockstar San Diego (then known as Angel Studios) began work on Red Dead Revolver with Capcom's funding in 2000. During the development, Angel Studios was acquired and rebranded by Rockstar Games. After Yoshiki Okamoto left Capcom in 2003, Red Dead Revolver was canceled until Rockstar Games acquired the rights to the game and revived it later that year. The game received mixed reviews from critics, and sold moderately well. A sequel, Red Dead Redemption, was released in May 2010, and a third game, Red Dead Redemption 2, was released in October 2018, both of which were critically acclaimed.
Red Dead Revolver is a third-person shooter and action-adventure game with a linear storyline. Players can fight enemies using handguns, rifles, shotguns, and throwable weapons such as hunting knives, molotov cocktails, and dynamite. New weapons can be purchased at the end of each level. Levels usually end with a boss fight, and each boss has a bounty on their head that is collected once they are killed. Each level uses a rating system that rewards players with unlockable content, such as new weapons or characters for the game's multiplayer component, depending on how well they completed specific objectives, such as the time taken to finish the level or weapon accuracy.
Though the game lacks an open-world, players may freely explore the small town of Brimstone between levels, where they can interact with NPCs.