It's very interesting to see how much AKI Productions improved this game in the span of a year based on the tremendous success that the previous game (World Tour) had. Just about every component is a massive improvement starting with graphics (more details in character models, signature entrances, better animations, more detailed background and stages, crowds, etc), better sound, improved gameplay, and added game modes.

Admittedly, AKI went on to further improve said mechanics in future games that had the WWF/WWE licenses but on a personal level I was a WCW/nWO fan and this is where the gaming wrestling genre peaked for me. The roster that WCW simply can't be beat since it featured a mix of wrestling legends like Hogan and Flair but also had a good combination of new and upcoming stars like Goldberg and Kidman. This game is not only a fun time but also a trip down nostalgia lane to a time where the wrestling industry as a whole peaked.

Some people may ask me "Vee why do you like Revenge more than No Mercy? Doesn't this have less match types and customization options?"

While that is true, there's a few things that always stuck out to me about No Mercy that I didn't care about. Number one is the roster. Look, as much as I love the shit out of Al Snow and Crash Holly comparing those guys to fucking Macho Man Randy Savage, Kevin Nash or goddamn Scott Steiner is absolute buffoonery. WCW's roster in 98 was absolutely fucking stacked and this game shows it off with easily the best roster in a wrestling game of all time. The only huge glaring omission is the lack of Ric Flair, which is unfortunate but I guess nothing can be perfect(even if Curt Hennig is in this game).

The other huge one for me is the music. You can talk about the absolute meme music for No Mercy on the menu as much as you want, but everything pertaining to soundtrack is flatout inferior to Revenge and especially World Tour. Some of No Mercy's match bgm literally puts me to fucking sleep with how low-key it is at times. Meanwhile Revenge and World Tour are constantly getting you hyped out of your mind.

Lastly, performance. It's pretty obvious they crammed a lot of shit into No Mercy so 4P matches are always dipping in framerate, but also just in general matches feel so much slower compared to Revenge.

These reasons may feel like nothing, but as the years go by No Mercy only gets harder to play and Revenge becomes easier to pick up. That's why it'll always be my favorite wrestling game from this gen.

Vast improvement over the previous outing. The second Western AKi game for the N64 introduces wrestler entrances, and more moves, arenas, and outfits than you can shake Sting's baseball bat at. The grappling system remains second to none even today, with its easy to master use of buttons and directions that let you perform just about every move that you can imagine. A perfect mixture of flawless wrestling gaming and storylines. If it looses any stars it's because graphically it's dated a fair bit and has been superseded by the even more superlative Wrestlemania 2000.

This is the WCW equivalent of WWF No Mercy, which is my pick for the greatest wrestling game of all time. While the base grappling is (almost) the same - the now-famous AKI engine, which is beloved in certain quarters - No Mercy has a huge leg-up on this game due to its Create-A-Wrestler mode, which ups the replay value for obsessive freaks like me. That said, if you're a WCW fan, this game has pretty much everything you could ever want from the last good days of the promotion, as well as AKI Man and a host of off-brand versions of notable Japanese wrestlers ripped from the VPW series. There's definitely some strange design choices - I've never quite understood why you get scored at the end of each match, and I don't know why Hogan's finisher is a Flair flop eye poke - but as a whole, this is definitely one of the best wrestling games of all time, and a must-play for fans of the Attitude Era. I once won the world title as Eric Bischoff, just to prove I could, so I think that says a lot about me as a person.