When you talk about the best wrestling games of all time, one game that will always be in the discussion is WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64. This game was the sequel to WWF WrestleMania 2000 WWF No Mercy did sell over one million copies. Was WWF No Mercy as good as everyone thinks or is everyone looking back at this game through rose-tinted glasses?
The season mode has been replaced with Championship mode. First, you select a championship then you choose a wrestler you want to take through that title path or you pick two wrestlers if you want to go after the tag team titles. There are a bunch of storylines in every championship path and if you want to get 100% in every championship mode, you have to play through every plot point of every championship.
In the championship paths, there are matches where you must win. If you do not win in these matches, you have a limited number of tries before loading up your game from your last save.
If a storyline involves you competing in the Royal Rumble then you will start #1 in the Royal Rumble every time. Also when a new entrant enters the Royal Rumble or a match like the Royal Rumble, the camera zooms in on that wrestler as he runs down the ramp so you can’t see what is going on while a wrestler is joining the eRoyal Rumble.
One improvement this game had over WWF Wrestlemania 2000 was when wrestlers dropped weapons. If you dropped a weapon in WWF Wrestlemania 2000, the weapon would fall through the floor and disappear. If you drop a weapon in WWF No Mercy, you can slam the wrestler on the weapon and there is a different sound effect you will hear if you slam a wrestler on a weapon instead of inside or outside of the ring.
All the wrestlers have their themes in the game and there is no commentary during matches. Music plays during the matches which is fine.
If your spirit meter is red and flashing, push the analog stick in any direction and you will be able to do up to five different special moves on your opponent. This only lasts for a specific amount of time so with most wrestlers, you will only be able to pull off one or two special moves before your meter returns to green where you have to build it up again.
In tag team matches, the illegal player can only get in the ring when Get In appears next to their meter because one of the legal wrestlers left the ring or was thrown out of the ring. In Championship mode, if you are in a tag team match, you always control the legal wrestler in these matches.
Something else that separates this game from other games at this time is the ability to go backstage. In WWF Wrestlemania 200o you could wrestle inside the ring, outside the ring, and on the ramp. In WWF No Mercy, you could wrestle in the parking lot, the locker room, and the hallway.
You will earn money as you play Championship mode or Survival mode and you can spend that money on different outfits, moves, new wrestlers, new weapons, and more in the Smackdown mall.
WWF No Mercy is more realistic because if you play as Triple H and you try to bodyslam Rikishi, you have to repeatedly tap the A button when trying to pick Rikishi up or you won’t be able to slam him. If you do pull a slam to a heavier wrestler, you will get a big boost to your spirit meter. Speaking of controls, the controls in this game are the same ones that were found in WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, WCW/nWo Revenge, and WWF Wrestlemania 2000.
Survival mode is like the Royal Rumble except there are 100 wrestlers in this match and if you can go all the way in Survival Mode, you can unlock certain wrestlers so you do not have to buy them in the Smackdown Mall and you can save your cash for a different unlockable. Another reason to play Survival Mode is you can earn cash in this mode just like Championship mode.
One flaw in this game is the difficulty of some matches in Championship mode. What happens is every move you try to pull off, wrestlers will reverse until their spirit meter is higher and then they are on the offense when your spirit meter was higher to begin with.
On the wrestler selection screen, if you hit C-right on certain wrestlers, you will find other wrestlers behind them. Why were wrestlers hidden behind other wrestlers on the wrestler select screen?
The create-a-wrestler is much better than what is in WWF Smackdown on the PlayStation.You have many more options when it comes to clothing, more options when it comes to things like facial hair and you can modify real-life wrestlers in this mode. Do you want to make Kurt Angle bald so he’s more like his real-life character in 2002? You can do that. While you can alter wrestler’s profiles and appearances, you can’t alter who their enemies are.
This game does feature a tournament mode which is the King Of The Ring tournament which can have 4, 8, 12, or 16 wrestlers. There are many different match types to choose from but you can alter the rules so you have more match types. Make an Iron Man match with submissions being the only way to win and you have an Ultimate Submission match. If you pick a 16-man team royal rumble with four wrestlers on each team, you have a stable match from WWF Attitude.
There are ladder matches and cage matches you can compete in where you have to repeatedly press A so your wrestler can get out of the cage or pull down whatever is hanging above the ring. You can also create a Pay-Per-View where you book up to 15 matches and you can name it, say where it’s taking place and you have many different arenas to choose from.
One notable wrestler missing from the roster is The Big Show. He was sent back down to developmental around this time but some of the stories in WWF Championship mode were based on real-life stories.
I give WWF No Mercy on Nintendo 64 8 out of 10. I didn’t like how they replaced wrestlers like The Big Show in World Championship stories but kept everything else the same mostly. I also didn’t like how in some matches, opponents would use reversal fest and reverse everything you tried until their spirit meter was stronger. Besides those two drawbacks, WWF No Mercy is a fun game to play and I agree that it is one of the best wrestling games of all time. If you like wrestling games and have a Nintendo 64 then you should not hesitate about picking up WWF No Mercy.
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