The Best N64 Wrestling game, WWF: No Mercy

WWF No Mercy is an N64 exclusive. I didn’t play this game when it came out, and I only heard about it in the 2010s. This is when I learned about all the games I missed out on. There were too many games for any one person to play.

This game was released in November 2000 and was the last wrestling game for the N64. It is a follow-up to WrestleMania 2000, which I probably should’ve played first, but whatever.

I’m going to do something different with this post. I want to look at the older reviews of the game and talk about them. I’ll take the two high and the two lowest scores if there are that many archived. I’ll do my best not to let this impact my score on the game.

TLDR: One of the Best Wrestling Games I’ve played so far.

Narrative

This game has a storyline that involves playing championship mode. This is really cool and more in-depth than the career mode in the Smackdown games or WWF Attitude and the ECW games. I like it a lot!

You can decide whether to be a Heel or a Face as the game plays out. It is pretty cool to see this. I went with the bad guy or Heel route.

This is great! It is way more involved than the other wrestling games I’ve played. It is great to play through this and see how far ahead of the other games I’ve played!

In my play-through, I was The Godfather and became Shane McMahon’s lucky. I was going for the European Championship, and it seemed like I wasn’t getting closer to that goal by following Shane around; oh well.

Gameplay

WWF No Mercy has great controls, a bunch of game modes, and a very good story mode that is a lot of fun to play. The gameplay in this game is so good. I had so much fun playing this game and found it hard to put down.

There are a bunch of game modes in WWF No Mercy. I stuck with the Championship mode and avoided the multiplayer and exhibition options. I probably should have played around with the create-a-wrestler mode, but I wanted to pick a wrestler I felt was underutilized.

The game has a great roster of wrestlers. These are mostly the people I remember watching when I was growing up. My friends and I were huge fans of pro wrestling at this time, but really we were fans of the WWF as that was what we watched most of the time.

No Mercy has an easy-to-learn control scheme. There are some things I don’t like about it, but that has more to do with the N64 controller. It just isn’t a controller I’m used to at this point. I’m more comfortable with the PS1 controller.

You can find the manual online. It can be helpful if you’ve never played the game or want to see what it looks like. As someone who usually collects loose cartridges, having the scans of these is awesome!

It used a pressure system. A tap or a hard press produces a different move. This is something I’m used to, as this system gets used a lot on the PS2.

It took me a little time to get used to the controls. Most of that was due to the controller and me having to check the manual to see what I was missing. There are some match types where the controls aren’t as straightforward as they could be, specifically the cage matches. I’m not a fan of this match type in video games, and the Royal Rumble is another match type I hate playing.

Overall, the gameplay is awesome! It took me some time to get used to the controls and to get a handle on the wrestler’s special and finishing moves. This is one of those games that feels good to play. The controls are excellent despite it taking me a little time to adjust to them. The learning curve isn’t too steep to matter.

Visuals

For an N64 game, WWF No Mercy looks great! It has the traditional blocky design that each N64 game has, but it isn’t too bad with this game. The textures are much smoother than the other games I’ve looked at, and the character models look considerably better than WCW Backstage Assault or Nitro.

The ring entrances are good for the N64. I like that the developers tried to include as many of the entrance videos as possible. The rest is done with in-game graphics, and it looks great!

The character models, animations, and ring look great. There are some backstage areas, and those look good as well. The crowd is the only thing that looks off, but it is still better than other attempts at having a crowd around the ring.

It is cool that there are struggle animations when you try to body-slam one of the heavy opponents. It is part of the great animations in the game, where everything is shown using the character’s body language. Instead of a health bar, you can see a wrestler get hurt and tired.

There is blood in the game. When you hit your opponent enough times, or when they get hit with a weapon, you’ll see them start to bleed. This feels less random than the ECW games, where the blood simply appears in random places on a wrestler.

The cage matches look great. The cage doesn’t get in the way of the camera at all, and it looks great. This is one of the better depictions of a steel cage that I’ve seen in a wrestling game.

I love the way this game looks. WWF No Mercy is one of the best-looking N64 games I’ve seen. I think the Smackdown games look a little better, and they have the entrance videos in the game, so that is a plus.

Reviews at the time

Looking back at these older reviews can be a lot of fun. I should’ve done this for the other wrestling games but didn’t think of it until recently. I’m looking at the two lowest scores and the two highest scores.

The two lowest scores came from Nintendo Power (7.3), which used a five-person committee to determine its score, and GameSpot (7.7), which appears to be one person’s opinion. Nintendo Power is better archived than GameSpot, so I’ll spend more time with that review.

Both reviews lament the repetitive releases of wrestling games. They were coming out yearly, and the publications compared them to serialized sports games like Madden and Fifa. Two reviewers from Nintendo Power tanked the score, and one complained that the game “took little skill to play.”

IGN gave the game a 9/10, and Game Informer gave it a 9.5/10. Both publications noted a few flaws and similarities with WrestleMania 2000 but agreed that it is a great game. A “second opinion” on the Game Informer review gives the game a 9.25/10. They questioned whether you needed to upgrade to No Mercy if you bought WrestleMania 2000.

I found the Nintendo Power review to be a little funny because you have the opinions of five people who disagree with the game. It seems odd to do things this way, as they didn’t really come to a consensus on the game. I think the view that you might not need to get this game if you have WrestleMania 2000 is a fair comment at the time. It’s not like everyone would trade in an older game for a newer one.  

9.5/10. This is the best wrestling game on the N64 and is as good as the Smackdown games on the PS1. I think this game compares favorably to Smackdown 2. The two games are very close.

Pros

• Great Graphics
• Great Gameplay
• Wonderful Story mode
• Great Roster

Cons

• Nothing worth mentioning.

Conclusion

This was great! I’m glad this is one of the games I enjoyed after hearing people talk about how great it is. Sometimes, I get a little worried when I go into a game like this because it might have been overhyped for me.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the case here. WWF No Mercy is one of the best wrestling games I’ve ever played. It was awesome to go back and play this game on the N64. After suffering through some of the WCW games, I’m so glad I got to play a few great games.

If you liked this post, check out my other wrestling game posts, such as WCW vs. NWO: World Tour or WWF Smackdown 2.