DIG DIG DIGGITY
DIG DIGGITY DOG
BREAK IT
DIG DIG DIGGITY
DIG DIGGITY DOG
UH
DIG DIG DIGGITY
DIG DIGGITY DOG
BREAK IT
DIG DIG DIGGITY
DIG DIGGITY DOG
HAHAHA
UH

A Nostalgia Review:
Playing No Mercy with my four closest high school friends, in the year 2000 of the lord Mick Foley, is a core memory for me. We would spend whole weekends at the friend's house with the largest TV—providing us both spectacle and the largest canvas to stunt on one another after throwing a best friend out of the ring. Entire Saturdays would be devoted to our player-created PPV events where every title belt was on the line but those were secondary to the drama we made up for our self-styled created wrestlers.

None of this is to say the single-player content was lacking. As I recall, it’s campaign mode was quite robust for its time, and wrestling games in the following years never lived up to the experiences I had with No Mercy's. But I don’t viscerally recall my campaign to win Mankind every WWF title belt in the same way I do the weekends spent battling my friends in the squared circle.

What I love(d) about WWF No Mercy
• The single-player campaign was my first experience of a game dynamically generating a villain/storyline. A random wrestler you had beaten would attack you and start a feud storyline. It blew my mind the first time it happened despite previews touting it as a feature.
• The game’s create-a-wrestler feature was perfect. It provided just enough customization for your appearance to look ~sort of~ like who you were recreating, but the focus was on the absurdly large move set you could pull from that, somehow, was still mostly balanced.
• Stealing your best friend’s finisher and using it on them to win their Heavyweight Championship.
• Holding off two of your best friends while your other best friend scales a ladder in the middle of the ring to win you the Tag Team Championship.
• Beating the shit out of Vince McMahon.

Why you might want to skip WWF No Mercy
• If you don’t have an N64 with a copy of WWF No Mercy lying around.
• If you hate a good time.

Dig diggity dog. WWF No Mercy is my most-played game of all time, and nothing else really comes close. (There was a six-month period in my life where I played literally nothing but this game.) Late Attitude Era is my wrestling comfort zone, and the AKI engine is the only half-decent take on wrestling mechanics in video games (outside of the Fire Pro series), so it was a natural fit. The thing that elevates this game over WCW/NWO Revenge is the Create-a-Wrestler mode, which turned it into a dream match machine. Still one of my favorite games to pop in and revisit every now and then, though I mostly stick to Fire Pro World these days.

Sluggish controls, janky collision detection, and punishing AI make No Mercy a frustrating single player experience. I was looking forward to playing through the game's story mode, but I hit a skill wall that I just couldn't push through. The 2-on-1 scenarios the game throws at the player feel especially unfair.

Playing exhibitions (where you can set the difficulty) or playing with friends is better way to enjoy the game, but it's disappointing the game's main single player mode is so difficult.

Pros: Late 90s wrestling games were everywhere, and advertised a ton to kids in gaming magazines and such, so it was tough to avoid. And of all the wrestling video games, this one stood above the rest of the pack. WWF No Mercy was filled to the brim with customization and player choice, where you could set the rules any way you liked. Referee mode was a favorite, as was the character creation mode, pretty extensive for its day. But so much fun trying to pull off moves, jumpin out of the ring, grabbing weapons and blunt objects to whack the other wrestlers with. And of course, this is N64, you got four player support, and what a great time this was if you were a wrestling fan of that era.

Cons: And I'm not even a wrestling fan! So I guess I can't speak so much on the accuracy to the sport, but in terms of cons, the collision detection wasn't always the best, and I recall the feeling of "what the fuck am I doing" happening quite frequently, being stuck in a chokehold, or holding someone else in one, trying to figure out how to pull off a specific move while looking like a buffoon in the process. It's a bit jank, but hey, it's the 90s! Still a fun time.

What it means to me: Yeah, not a wrestling fan, so this is pretty special to make it to the list. Played this a ton with my brothers and step bros, it was just a good time, whether you were into wrestling or not. And it was just so darn silly! Making up rules, creating characters, it didn't take itself seriously at all, and it let us have fun!

I had heard for years that this was one of the pinnacles of Wrestling games, and now that I've finally played it? Ehhhhhhh.... It's fine to a point. It has that corny attitude era charm, I can't deny that, but it really does not feel fun to play. The AI is insanely brutal at times, and I swear I could not make the game do what I wanted it to do during my matches. It also doesn't help with the amount of Handicap matches they throw at you that winning just feels like an impossible task sometimes. There is fun to be had in No Mercy, but man, I couldn't find it.

WWF No Mercy is widely considered the pinnacle of wrestling games on the Nintendo 64, and for good reason. It boasts a massive roster of beloved Attitude Era wrestlers, deep customization options, and incredibly smooth gameplay mechanics based on its predecessors. The Championship mode delivers a compelling solo experience, while the sheer array of match types guarantees endless multiplayer chaos. WWF No Mercy is a legendary wrestling title that set a standard that hasn't been surpassed by many of its successors.

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is cookin is cookin is cookin is cookin

this is aesthetically the best wrestling game and perfect with its virtual pro wrestling controls and a good roster of guys but the championship mode is so ass sometimes with its handicap matches. i cry when i hear the apa theme hit

BEST OF ALL TIME! I legit still play this game and it is so smooth and crisp. The game play is fantastic and really requires some critical thinking.

I even have one of the copies that deletes your saves, but there are work arounds. Mine only deletes if I play the campaign mode too many times (5 or 6 play throughs). You can save created wrestlers on a memory pack, so if you unlock a rare character, you can copy them onto the memory pack. Or, if you play through the survival mode, you can unlock them all by eliminating upwards of a hundred opponents. Make a character with a low swiping kick and you have a good chance of winning.

Somehow, WWF No Mercy is only just beginning to show its age some two decades on. In that time, it has reigned almost unchallenged as the supreme professional wrestling video game and even now boasts features that modern releases struggle to emulate.

The in-ring action is surprisingly deep, with a number of features not even listed in the game's instruction manual. Players can often find these advanced techniques for themselves through experimentation and extended play (or, perhaps more likely these days, via the internet). The light and strong grapples and strikes are accessed intuitively by either pressing or holding their respective buttons- almost everything else is secondary, though clever mapping of the controller means you're not going to confuse yourself and wonder what button performs which action. Easy to pick up and play, deceptively deep and with lots of room to learn control mastery.

The game may have aged least well graphically. Even at the time, reviewers commented on how the playable roster didn't have any shoulder joints and some odd animations and strange choices for face images do sometimes leave characters looking a bit odd. Additionally, in spite of the relative simplicity of the models, the game will sometimes creak a little when four characters are on screen in a match, despite there being very little to suggest anything being rendered is processor-intensive. The crushed music tracks being a casualty of the N64's chosen medium doesn't help matters either, but it was impressive enough at the time.

But if you can get past those admittedly minor woes, you'll find a game teeming with content. If you want to clear every single branching Championship mode, you'll have to play dozens of times. The stories twist and turn depending on the outcomes of your matches and filling out a Championship map to 100% completion is incredibly satisfying because there's no simple option to leap back and re-select a prior chapter- you're going to have to work to get full completion and, more importantly, you're going to feel you earned it.

Clearing out the in-game shop is another challenge in itself, with some items costing so much you'll have to clear every Championship path just to afford them alone! But the Survival mode is a nifty way to rack up the dough, if you're willing to put in the time and effort. The rewards are substantial, with not only unlockable characters, arenas and weapons but hundreds of options for customisation available to you.

The customisation itself is phenomenal and, in some regards, superior to what we have in modern WWE games. Eighteen slots to create an original wrestler may not seem like a lot, but it doesn't end there. Every single character in the game is editable- while you can't change their moves and AI, you can change every aspect of their looks and profile, meaning, if you like, you can get rid of the huge late Attitude Era WWF roster the game offers and replace them with a roster entirely of your choosing! And did I mention each character slot has four attire slots, meaning you can choose to multiply that roster by four?

There is one enormous flaw in this game that I've elected not to reflect in my score but is worth mentioning. If you buy this game physically, you'll want to be sure the cartridge bears a "-1" at the end of the serial number. This is a revision to the original game which unfortunately does remove blood graphics (but not functionality, luckily) but more crucially removes a game crippling bug. The original version of the game has a bug in it that means your progress will be wiped completely at random. Just be mindful if you have a cart from the original run that you'll struggle to keep a hold of your unlocked and customised characters.

It took THQ a long time to come close to this calibre of wrestling game again and it took 2K a lot of false starts and huge missteps, and even then they still lack features of this seminal title in the genre. WWF No Mercy may not be the perfect wrestling game at the time of writing this, but it very probably was when it came out and for a long time afterwards.