"Farewell to the Moonlit Night"), is a third-person shooter video game developed by Blue Moon Studio with Metro Corporation and published by Taito for the PlayStation 2 console.
10,000 Bullets follows an elite hitman named Crow, who works for an Italian mob family and has the innate power of the "gunslinger", allowing him to manipulate the flow of time in battle.
10,000 Bullets was directed by Suikoden franchise creator Yoshitaka Murayama, who left Konami in 2002 and started his own development firm, Blue Moon Studio, shortly thereafter.
Accompanied by Spriggan illustrator Ryōji Minagawa and composers Yasunori Mitsuda and Miki Higashino, Murayama began producing 10,000 Bullets about a half a year after founding the new company.
After being taken in by mob boss Papa Tonio, Crow is taught to optimize his abilities by a fellow hitman named Judas, a fugitive from France.
Styled similar to cinematography found in The Wachowskis' The Matrix film franchise and gameplay mechanics in games such as Dead to Rights and Max Payne, the player is given an ability to slow down time and thus dodge multitudes of flying bullets and other obstacles.
Successfully dispatching several foes in a row earns the player bonus points, which can be used at the end of a stage to purchase upgrades like more health, as well as special attacks and acrobatic evasion skills that can be mapped to certain controller buttons.
[8] 10,000 Bullets was produced by Suikoden series creator Yoshitaka Murayama under his own Blue Moon Studio, with game development handled by Metro Corporation and published by Taito.
[5][7] Before signing on to create the role-playing franchise, Murayama had been wanting to make a shoot 'em up, citing his preference for arcade action titles such as Taito's Metal Black.
[2][5] The music for the game was co-composed by Konami veteran Miki Higashino and Yasunori Mitsuda, famous for his work on Square properties such as Chrono Trigger and Xenogears.
He noticed a faulty camera and lock-on system issues, bland environments, a tedious adventure mode, and a musical score that does not match the game's overall theme.
[6] 10,000 Bullets was met coldy by the editors of Official UK PlayStation 2 Magazine, who summarized it as "dull action-adventure which combines sub-standard bullet-time combat, badly synched cut-scenes, and a waif-like plot" and stated that "not even hardcore masochists should touch it".