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.
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.