Ultra Pro Wrestling looks like it's going to be Virtual Pro Wrestling III. I can't wait. No cartridge limitations this time around and the customization of Fire Pro added in.
Those David Lockett videos were so heart warming. During my childhood no mercy days I created " Pain" who was Kane but green, and with Scotty too hotty's spiked up hair for some reason. He was Kane's evil brother (not the undertaker..... This was another brother,) and He did a triple power bomb pin and pretty much all the insane high flying moves.
@@ChubbyCox13 I remember when Linda McMahon was in the intro but I couldn't figure out to unlock her until I turned 17 years old in 2017. Years and years I've been trying to unlock her and HO😂😂
My friends and I started our own video game wrestling federation, called Friday Night Fights, or FNF. We would meet up every Friday to do our weekly show, and once a month to do our PPV. We had a crazy fatal 4 way match on SmackDown! that lasted 3 hours…and it was for the Hardcore title. lol! Such good times.
Despite having never played the game, I loved this deep dive! Massive credit for still making the content so approachable and huge kudos also to Andrew for the edit on this
I spent an entire summer break beating every title mode when I was 8. I unlocked everything. Unfortunately, I had a cartridge that had THAT glitch. Erased all my data. I just busted out crying.
This is my favorite wrestling game of all time. Played it when it came out and yes I got one of the cartridges that erased everything. But a new memory card and 24 years later and I still come back and play this game with the same love and nostalgia that is deserved. Perfection in my humble opinion.
I was always a Playstation guy so my go-tos were the Smackdown games, but a couple of my buddies in high school did have N64s and No Mercy and it was always a blast to play. I also remember just last year at NXT No Mercy (which I attended live), the intro video for that show was such a well-done piece of work, using the No Mercy interface to run down the card for the night. Great stuff!
Something I love about WWF No Mercy is that you can definitely do intergeneder matches which means I can do a self insert and beat Val Venis mercilessly
Loved No Mercy as a kid I was unlucky and had the cart which reset itself, I would get so angry whenever I chose custom character and heard the default customer wrestler intro music it still goes through me today like nails on a chalk board. I would then proceed to make my character again and jump back into the hardcore championship story mode, I did this way more then I should of, I eventually ended up just going back to playing Wrestlemania 2000 when my older brother told me I should just play that one I would play that one and found out that my brother had customised all the default wrestlers to make them look funny which you see in the intro scene which always made me smile and laugh, good brother right there.
I got the game during the first run of production, which meant I had the one with the save-deleting bug. Can still remember my confusion when, during story mode, my CAW came out in just his pants and default hair, etc. When I realised what had happened, I bought a Rumble Pak so that I could save all my CAWs and upload them every time the bug hit. Why the game has endured has a lot to do with how simple the controls were while also allowing a complexity rarely seen in other non-AKI wrestling games, particularly the same multitude of positionally contextual variances each character could employ. The roster also helps a great deal, as did the creation suite, which was top-notch. Additionally, you must also factor in a little bit of "rose-tinted spectacles" and nostalgia, that feeling of playing it back then. I believe that's why a lot of people were excited for the AEW game as it appears to be a throwback to that AKI-engine style of gameplay with a modern graphical sheen... and then, post release, we realised that while there were elements of that, the developers didn't seem to go for anything beyond that, so the AEW game was ridiculously shallow after only an hour or two of play-time. No Mercy built on what the previous AKI N64 games had done, perfected the formula, and was at that sweet point where the graphics had reached "good enough" status and gameplay above all else was the experience the developers strived for.
I owned every WCW video game made after World Tour aside from anything that was hand held. I also owned several WWF games up until I stopped watching wrestling. Including a few of the Smackdown games. No Mercy is still one of the wrestling games I remember being the best.
That was amazing! Hits you right in the nostalgias. I enjoyed the historical overview and industry talk as well. I still have my 64 and Virtual Pro Wrestling 2! We played many hours of No Mercy in our college dorm room!
That happened to me! Me & my brother sneakily removed it from the wrapping paper (I think it was for Christmas) a few days early, and snuck back to play it again the next day only to find it wiped, thinking we’d done something wrong, we were mortified on coming to ‘open’ it, and find our data wiped again.
I had WCW/nWo Revenge, WM 2000 and No Mercy. I loved them and probably played them more than any other game on my N64, I was a big fan of Reskins of Japanese wrestlers in Revenge Dr Frank, Executioner and AKI man w were my favs. I actually had Warzone, Attitude and ECW Hardcore Revolution too and I loved those games I had all the moves memorised and the CAW system was why more detailed. The bloodless No Mercy is the one we got in Australia my friend got the one with the save glitch. Shout out to my No Mercy CAWs Blaze, Jack Shock, and The Texas Butcher.
The original arcade version of Data East's Tag Team Wrestling wasn't made by Data East... It was made by a little-known arcade developer at the time named Technos. They went on to become famous for making Double Dragon, but it wasn't their last arcade wrestling game: They went on to make Mat Mania in 1985, then some unknown shit that nobody's ever played called WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestlefest. Whatever THOSE were.
WWF No Mercy is a timeless video game. A few years ago I realized if you customized a wrestler's main profile appearance those changes will be seen in the intro video.
I don't think I'm a wrestling game sort of guy, though admittedly WrestleMania the Arcade Game is probably my favorite, purely because it's a Mortal Kombat shell with wrestlers of the day. It's a shame it didn't catch on and get sequels with new wrestlers and expand upon the roster, it would've been super neat to have an Attitude Era roster the size of Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
I don't know how true this is. It was thought the sequel to 'WCW/nWo: Revenge' was going to be called 'WCW/nWo: Starrcade'. The sequel to 'WWF No Mercy' was thought to be called 'WWF Invasion'. 'Def Jam Vendetta' published by EA was the initially the sequel to 'WCW: Mayhem'. A lot of work had gone into 'WCW Mayhem 2' and at one point the backstage areas from 'WCW Backstage Assault' was going to be used in it. It was scheduled to be released on PS2/Xbox/Game Cube which 'Def Jam Vendetta ended up doing.
Getting real wrestlers to cut a promo on your brother's Create-A-Wrestler must be the biggest and kindest BRO-Move in all of BRO-Moves. I tip my hat for that, mate.
When I was a kid. My friends and I were just happy to play a Wrestling video game. We got some Wrestling games WWE & WCW for the Playstation 1 around 2001 or 2002. And we just played Wrestling video games. So maybe the playground evolved very quickly. Because I don't remember any of us saying anything bad or critiquing the video games. We just played the Wrestling video games. I didn't ever own a Nintendo 64. I was born in 1994. So maybe that 5 year age gap difference was enough time for the younger kids to not be mad at the video games or Bash them. I just remember my friends would want to come over and play the Wrestling video games with me. 😀
One thing that tends ro go unmentioned is the quality of the story mode, and specifically how often the story will advance whether you win or lose via branching paths.
i had 2 primary CAW's 1 was called Ruckus- 7ft 400lbs Kane's basic move set but did Shooting Stars like Kidman, Dragon Sleepers and Spears. Ruckus looked like Shield Era Roman Reigns. 2nd was as realistic a clone of myself as i could. 6ft 4, 400lms, pudgy body, etc, but a full-on arsenal of high flying moves - my fave was hit a shooting star from top of the ladder in the ring onto my opponent on the announce desk. Geez i love No Mercy.
One of the most legendary games of all time. TBH part of the reason is the fact it captures the time frame of 2000 WWF which is a very beloved year in the WWE's history (my personal favorite), the other reason is because for years to come, we kept getting wrestling games that couldn't top it. Imagine playing stinkers like RAW 2, Wrestlemania 21 or SvR 08 over No Mercy! No Mercy easily clears games like those. However, I think ages ago Yuke's made it a mission to top all the North American Wrestling games, taking elements that weren't present in the main series and filling in the blanks. Most WWE games (not 2K15 or 2K20) in the last 10 years (plus Fire Pro Wrestling World) I'd play any day over No Mercy.
I have the original glitched black cartridge of this game can confirm but it only erases the data for championship mode if you use a created wrestler in that mode. One of my prized possessions and my favorite game of all time.
Loved No Mercy. I spent countless summer nights with friends playing all night getting yelled at by my mother to be quiet. A friend and I would take our created Wrestlers Rage and Gorilla and turn Royal Rumble to pinfall, submissions and turn off over the top rope eliminations and see if we could run the 30 person gauntlet as a team.
WCWvNWO Revenge was my JAM growing up with my mates and I. So much so, we always joke about the likes of Dake Ken, Kim Chee and Brickowski with loving nostalgia. And I recently join a Basketball team and got Brickowski on the back of my jersey!
I still have that black NM cartridge to this day. And while it enraged me that the game file just resetted, I still consider it to be one of the best wrestling games. The WWF Backlash sequel would have combined the Virtual Pro Wrestling elements with NM. But with the Game Cube now a thing, it was dropped out, never to be heard again... Now Hyperfocus Games is having its hands on a NM tribute and has the potential to have it become its spiritual successor, in Ultra Pro Wrestling (something AEW Fight Forever, a game that wants people to mainly play their mini games, Stadium Stampede and only with their roster because the creation suite is so limited that even EA of all company have better options...) has failed to do so. The demo is coming out on PC very soon (the third quarter window is their aim) with a console release some year(s) after. While they have a nice roster of original characters already (coming from the mind of drawer Hal Haney) they also have a plethora of IRL past and present wrestlers on board (Demolition, The British Bulldogs, Matt Cardona, Hayabusa, Bull Nakano and more), as Free Agent DLCs. They also have OVW on board, as Promotion DLC, at the moment. The game won't be intended to be a yearly release, but rather, it's gonna be constantly updated with game options and modes. Maybe if the game is popular enough, they could have a chat with you, to have David Lockett in (alongside a European promotion or two and a couple of wrestlers on board)👀
A little clarity on the data erasing glitch, Data 2500, and giant weapons. Bought the game day 1 and lost all data multiple times, NEVER just randomly or when turning on the game. This glitch occurred only after >X kb data was saved to the cart. Each wrestler had 4 outfits but you could modify everything (face/ body/ etc) for each slot (premade or custom). Essentially for each wrestler, you could make 4. In this state the game would apparently operate fine until Data 2500 would show up either as a Royal Rumble entrant or to do a run in during a match. You immediately knew something was cooking as "The Dude" as we call him wasn't on the roster and didn't walk or run but rather floated to the ring. I'd dive off the couch to yank the cartridge which kept the total erasure from happening maybe once out of at least 5-6 times. Giant weapons is something I barely see mention of online and never in the manner we consistently achieved the easter egg. To do so, enter a 2 player King of the Ring tag tournament with a created player and The Undertaker. Win the first match and every weapon you get in the second round match should be RIDICULOUSLY big. Please comment if you manage to get some giant weapons using that technique. My memory is Swiss cheese but my friends & I spent SO many hours playing that game I'll never forget those quirks nor the fun had.
I love how you got "Double J" to go along with the David Lockett thing. That's awesome. Of course, you know how to spell it, right? That's L-O _haha_ C-K _haha_ E double T. Ain't he great?
My friends and I mainly used strikes and grapples so we made custom versions of wrestlers called “supers” that had maxed out head/body/arms stats with 1s in legs and flying. Lol. The supers ended up dominating survival mode, I will say.
Just finished. Couldn't have said it better myself. Perfect Mini History of the game and AKI. I hear David Lockett has watched it 4 times. Ps I swear you say "Mean Cliff" when you're with Best Friend Jeffrey 😂
I had a glitched copy, I distinctly remember there being a statistics table in the options the first time I played it after opening it on Christmas day. I exited the options menu and when I checked again, the stats table was gone. It wouldn't even return after formatting the cart.
Half entrances have nothing to do with space saving. It was because they didn't have time to finish them and they were very buggy when they were under crunch, so the ring walk was cut to save dev time. The animations are all still on the cart and functional, just buggy. If they cut entrance length to save space for other stuff then they failed bc the content is still in the cartridge just unused. Not the only dropped content in the game that still on cart. -Source: I'm a WWF No Mercy modder known for arena retexturing and hacking since 2007. Former member of The No Mercy Zone forum, and former lead admin at No Mercy Modstation, circa 2009
5:58 I have this game, it's pretty good, more arcadey than the usual firepro, a bit more like Slam Masters but you still have to time the inputs, I feel it gives you more leeway than the standard FP games of the era though.
Loved this game as a kid! I would always just equip Lita with Throat Thrust 02 and go into the survival mode. I loved to write down everyone I eliminated for pretty much no reason 😅
I never got no mercy. I had war zone and thats where my love of wrestling games came from, then went to WrestleMania 2000. I skipped no mercy for some reason. After that I saved all my chore money every year for the smackdown vs raws until I got a Xbox 360, then I moved on to gta4 until I got the ring of death. I stepped away from gaming until my brother gave me his PS3 and the very last wrestling game I ever bought or played was WWE 2k with the special flip cover with Daniel Bryan. I havent played another wrestling game ever since. Growing up I didn't think games would get so expensive but adult me said "nah we got bills now my boy" 😂
I got one of the glitched cartridges. Toys R Us was nice enough to take it back and exchange it for a new one at no charge. That whole comment really dated me just now, didn’t it?
@aporkpiepizza I love em both. I wish Revenge had more match types like No Mercy has, but nothing gets me more pumped than the opening music on Revenge after the Rumble Pak detected screen.
Loved No Mercy. Had it on the N64 & after it's unfortunate demise thanks to my cat & a cup of tea😂😂😂 I had it on an N64 emulator up until 2021... been itching to play through any game like this again & my God I can't wait for #UPW's demo later this year & it's release in 2025.
Speaking of "glitches"in WWE No Mercy, there's a supposed cheat that added a match like the one from the David Arquette WCW movie with the 3 cages. Supposedly it was a steel cage match then you would climb a ladder into a second ring with another steel cage, then climb another ladder into a 3rd ring with a 3rd cage. I never got it to work. 😢
We need that Tom Campbell/Triple Jump crossover. I love his passion for video games and storytelling.
This is why I'm hyped for Ultra Pro Wrestling! No other game has captured the spirit of AKI games like this one has so far
Never heard of that game. When is that coming out and for what system
@@nathanwagner9895It’s slated for mid 2025, and it’s coming out for all systems.
All platforma and it's coming out in 2025 and the steam demo is either august or September@@nathanwagner9895
@nathanwagner9895 it's suppose to Release its Demo this year and then it will be finished and available in stores in 2025
@@nathanwagner9895google it
Loved it as well as WCW NWO Revenge. The rosters and the ability to pick up and play blew most other wrestling games out of the water
Wcw game was AWESOME! and legit
4 l i f e 🤘
Ultra Pro Wrestling looks like it's going to be Virtual Pro Wrestling III. I can't wait. No cartridge limitations this time around and the customization of Fire Pro added in.
“THE MAN BREEZE… something Shawn Michaels experienced during his caps phase.”
GOD I love Tom 😂😂😂
What a legend
WWF No Mercy was the Final Fantasy VII of wrestling games. The gamechanger that became the standard.
Good analogy.
@@nocturne311 Revenge
Except ff7 was boring. And No Mercy didn’t change things as much as Virtual Pro 2 did.
I spent sooo much time playing this game on N64.
Those David Lockett videos were so heart warming. During my childhood no mercy days I created " Pain" who was Kane but green, and with Scotty too hotty's spiked up hair for some reason. He was Kane's evil brother (not the undertaker..... This was another brother,) and He did a triple power bomb pin and pretty much all the insane high flying moves.
It’s funny how the possibly best wrestling name is named after one of the many random PPVs
They had a lot of wrestlemania games
I’m
@@yousufseedat7736you
I was thinking the same thing. None of the Wrestlemania games really lived up to that name.
Me and my friends would shake hands and say “No one gets mad” before each match when we would play this game back in the day
I would imagine this pact would be broken right?
Ring of Honor style 🤝
Me and my guys would say respect mine and I'll respect yours when doing a fatal 4-way.
@@ChubbyCox13 I remember when Linda McMahon was in the intro but I couldn't figure out to unlock her until I turned 17 years old in 2017. Years and years I've been trying to unlock her and HO😂😂
My friends and I started our own video game wrestling federation, called Friday Night Fights, or FNF. We would meet up every Friday to do our weekly show, and once a month to do our PPV. We had a crazy fatal 4 way match on SmackDown! that lasted 3 hours…and it was for the Hardcore title. lol! Such good times.
My friends send I would do this as well, tag title ladder matches that would last for an hour or so. I miss those times.
Despite having never played the game, I loved this deep dive! Massive credit for still making the content so approachable and huge kudos also to Andrew for the edit on this
This game has always been one of my favorite wrestling games if not my favorite
I spent an entire summer break beating every title mode when I was 8. I unlocked everything. Unfortunately, I had a cartridge that had THAT glitch. Erased all my data. I just busted out crying.
Me too
This is my favorite wrestling game of all time. Played it when it came out and yes I got one of the cartridges that erased everything. But a new memory card and 24 years later and I still come back and play this game with the same love and nostalgia that is deserved. Perfection in my humble opinion.
I was always a Playstation guy so my go-tos were the Smackdown games, but a couple of my buddies in high school did have N64s and No Mercy and it was always a blast to play. I also remember just last year at NXT No Mercy (which I attended live), the intro video for that show was such a well-done piece of work, using the No Mercy interface to run down the card for the night. Great stuff!
Something I love about WWF No Mercy is that you can definitely do intergeneder matches which means I can do a self insert and beat Val Venis mercilessly
Val Venis was the man
@@FlawlessP401now he’s a sad nutcase.
Loved No Mercy as a kid I was unlucky and had the cart which reset itself, I would get so angry whenever I chose custom character and heard the default customer wrestler intro music it still goes through me today like nails on a chalk board. I would then proceed to make my character again and jump back into the hardcore championship story mode, I did this way more then I should of, I eventually ended up just going back to playing Wrestlemania 2000 when my older brother told me I should just play that one I would play that one and found out that my brother had customised all the default wrestlers to make them look funny which you see in the intro scene which always made me smile and laugh, good brother right there.
When I first saw the title of the video, I was hoping we'd get Tom talking about this. Great work here.
👋
UPW! The No Mercy sequel.
I got the game during the first run of production, which meant I had the one with the save-deleting bug. Can still remember my confusion when, during story mode, my CAW came out in just his pants and default hair, etc. When I realised what had happened, I bought a Rumble Pak so that I could save all my CAWs and upload them every time the bug hit.
Why the game has endured has a lot to do with how simple the controls were while also allowing a complexity rarely seen in other non-AKI wrestling games, particularly the same multitude of positionally contextual variances each character could employ. The roster also helps a great deal, as did the creation suite, which was top-notch.
Additionally, you must also factor in a little bit of "rose-tinted spectacles" and nostalgia, that feeling of playing it back then. I believe that's why a lot of people were excited for the AEW game as it appears to be a throwback to that AKI-engine style of gameplay with a modern graphical sheen... and then, post release, we realised that while there were elements of that, the developers didn't seem to go for anything beyond that, so the AEW game was ridiculously shallow after only an hour or two of play-time.
No Mercy built on what the previous AKI N64 games had done, perfected the formula, and was at that sweet point where the graphics had reached "good enough" status and gameplay above all else was the experience the developers strived for.
Great video! No mention of No Mercy spiritual successor Ultra Pro Wrestling coming 2025 tho??
I owned every WCW video game made after World Tour aside from anything that was hand held. I also owned several WWF games up until I stopped watching wrestling. Including a few of the Smackdown games. No Mercy is still one of the wrestling games I remember being the best.
One of the best games of all time.
That was amazing! Hits you right in the nostalgias. I enjoyed the historical overview and industry talk as well. I still have my 64 and Virtual Pro Wrestling 2!
We played many hours of No Mercy in our college dorm room!
“Sledgehammer” for me. 1 part Ultimate Warrior, 1 part Golberg, 1 part Sting and a little bit of the Undertaker. Took No Mercy by storm!
That happened to me! Me & my brother sneakily removed it from the wrapping paper (I think it was for Christmas) a few days early, and snuck back to play it again the next day only to find it wiped, thinking we’d done something wrong, we were mortified on coming to ‘open’ it, and find our data wiped again.
Let's go Tom! I'm here for this, even though I've never actually played this game and I've always wanted to
I just wanted to say thank you for making this. These games were a big part of what made me a wrestling fan.
I had WCW/nWo Revenge, WM 2000 and No Mercy. I loved them and probably played them more than any other game on my N64, I was a big fan of Reskins of Japanese wrestlers in Revenge Dr Frank, Executioner and AKI man w were my favs. I actually had Warzone, Attitude and ECW Hardcore Revolution too and I loved those games I had all the moves memorised and the CAW system was why more detailed. The bloodless No Mercy is the one we got in Australia my friend got the one with the save glitch. Shout out to my No Mercy CAWs Blaze, Jack Shock, and The Texas Butcher.
We need a real WWE No Mercy 2
The original arcade version of Data East's Tag Team Wrestling wasn't made by Data East... It was made by a little-known arcade developer at the time named Technos. They went on to become famous for making Double Dragon, but it wasn't their last arcade wrestling game: They went on to make Mat Mania in 1985, then some unknown shit that nobody's ever played called WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestlefest. Whatever THOSE were.
Tom is so good at making every video watchable no matter the topic
WWF No Mercy is a timeless video game. A few years ago I realized if you customized a wrestler's main profile appearance those changes will be seen in the intro video.
BTW im working on a save hopefully mod that will feature every No Mercy wrestler to ever appear on a No Mercy PPV card
First Fire Pro Wrestling game I played was on GBA and it was so good, can't believe its still going to this day
Shoutout to Wrestling Bios!!
I don't think I'm a wrestling game sort of guy, though admittedly WrestleMania the Arcade Game is probably my favorite, purely because it's a Mortal Kombat shell with wrestlers of the day. It's a shame it didn't catch on and get sequels with new wrestlers and expand upon the roster, it would've been super neat to have an Attitude Era roster the size of Mortal Kombat Trilogy.
Fantastic video essay. Excellent work 🫡
I love Tom telling me stories
I don't know how true this is. It was thought the sequel to 'WCW/nWo: Revenge' was going to be called 'WCW/nWo: Starrcade'. The sequel to 'WWF No Mercy' was thought to be called 'WWF Invasion'. 'Def Jam Vendetta' published by EA was the initially the sequel to 'WCW: Mayhem'. A lot of work had gone into 'WCW Mayhem 2' and at one point the backstage areas from 'WCW Backstage Assault' was going to be used in it. It was scheduled to be released on PS2/Xbox/Game Cube which 'Def Jam Vendetta ended up doing.
DIG DIG DIGGITY DIG DIGGITY DOG!
If you know, you know
Getting real wrestlers to cut a promo on your brother's Create-A-Wrestler must be the biggest and kindest BRO-Move in all of BRO-Moves.
I tip my hat for that, mate.
When I was a kid. My friends and I were just happy to play a Wrestling video game. We got some Wrestling games WWE & WCW for the Playstation 1 around 2001 or 2002. And we just played Wrestling video games. So maybe the playground evolved very quickly. Because I don't remember any of us saying anything bad or critiquing the video games. We just played the Wrestling video games. I didn't ever own a Nintendo 64. I was born in 1994. So maybe that 5 year age gap difference was enough time for the younger kids to not be mad at the video games or Bash them. I just remember my friends would want to come over and play the Wrestling video games with me. 😀
One thing that tends ro go unmentioned is the quality of the story mode, and specifically how often the story will advance whether you win or lose via branching paths.
Thanks for the blink-and-you-miss it reference to Here Comes the Pain.
Great retrospective and great video.
You set the bar very high.
The wrestler portraits in the background are beautiful. They would look incredible in anyone's home!
My No Mercy cartridge is one of the glitch ones. The originals say NUS-006, then the newer ones with out the glitch have NUS-006-01
I just picked up one that doesn't erase my wrestlers or my cash. I GOT LUCKY😢
This is my most played game of all time along with GoldenEye 007. Great work as always Tom and Cultaholic 👏🏾🔥
I love the concept of tom giving us a wha happun type wrestling related gaming specials from time to time.
Good bad and weird.
My favorite was playing 4 player Royal Rumble and getting thrown out only to control the next entrant: The Godfather's Ho!
i had 2 primary CAW's 1 was called Ruckus- 7ft 400lbs Kane's basic move set but did Shooting Stars like Kidman, Dragon Sleepers and Spears. Ruckus looked like Shield Era Roman Reigns. 2nd was as realistic a clone of myself as i could. 6ft 4, 400lms, pudgy body, etc, but a full-on arsenal of high flying moves - my fave was hit a shooting star from top of the ladder in the ring onto my opponent on the announce desk. Geez i love No Mercy.
One of the most legendary games of all time. TBH part of the reason is the fact it captures the time frame of 2000 WWF which is a very beloved year in the WWE's history (my personal favorite), the other reason is because for years to come, we kept getting wrestling games that couldn't top it. Imagine playing stinkers like RAW 2, Wrestlemania 21 or SvR 08 over No Mercy! No Mercy easily clears games like those. However, I think ages ago Yuke's made it a mission to top all the North American Wrestling games, taking elements that weren't present in the main series and filling in the blanks. Most WWE games (not 2K15 or 2K20) in the last 10 years (plus Fire Pro Wrestling World) I'd play any day over No Mercy.
Fantastic video! Love how in depth it is, keep up the great work!
You didn't mention ultra pro wrestling
I have the original glitched black cartridge of this game can confirm but it only erases the data for championship mode if you use a created wrestler in that mode. One of my prized possessions and my favorite game of all time.
I still play it to this day on my channel. The gameplay still holds up...
My game deleted so much but I always just beat it 100 percent again cause I loved it
You guys know about Ultra Pro Wrestling, right?!
This game was one of the greatest birthday gifts of my young life
Loved No Mercy. I spent countless summer nights with friends playing all night getting yelled at by my mother to be quiet.
A friend and I would take our created Wrestlers Rage and Gorilla and turn Royal Rumble to pinfall, submissions and turn off over the top rope eliminations and see if we could run the 30 person gauntlet as a team.
WCW/NWO Revenge 4 life!
No Mercy was indeed awesome, I kept all the N64 wrestling games I had back in the day. WWF 2000 was my favourite 🌹🇬🇧👌
WCWvNWO Revenge was my JAM growing up with my mates and I. So much so, we always joke about the likes of Dake Ken, Kim Chee and Brickowski with loving nostalgia. And I recently join a Basketball team and got Brickowski on the back of my jersey!
Awesome game, but let's not forget that WCW vs. NWO World Tour set the blueprint. :D
I still have that black NM cartridge to this day. And while it enraged me that the game file just resetted, I still consider it to be one of the best wrestling games. The WWF Backlash sequel would have combined the Virtual Pro Wrestling elements with NM. But with the Game Cube now a thing, it was dropped out, never to be heard again...
Now Hyperfocus Games is having its hands on a NM tribute and has the potential to have it become its spiritual successor, in Ultra Pro Wrestling (something AEW Fight Forever, a game that wants people to mainly play their mini games, Stadium Stampede and only with their roster because the creation suite is so limited that even EA of all company have better options...) has failed to do so. The demo is coming out on PC very soon (the third quarter window is their aim) with a console release some year(s) after. While they have a nice roster of original characters already (coming from the mind of drawer Hal Haney) they also have a plethora of IRL past and present wrestlers on board (Demolition, The British Bulldogs, Matt Cardona, Hayabusa, Bull Nakano and more), as Free Agent DLCs. They also have OVW on board, as Promotion DLC, at the moment. The game won't be intended to be a yearly release, but rather, it's gonna be constantly updated with game options and modes. Maybe if the game is popular enough, they could have a chat with you, to have David Lockett in (alongside a European promotion or two and a couple of wrestlers on board)👀
Tom! This was INCREDIBLE! More please!
A little clarity on the data erasing glitch, Data 2500, and giant weapons.
Bought the game day 1 and lost all data multiple times, NEVER just randomly or when turning on the game. This glitch occurred only after >X kb data was saved to the cart. Each wrestler had 4 outfits but you could modify everything (face/ body/ etc) for each slot (premade or custom). Essentially for each wrestler, you could make 4.
In this state the game would apparently operate fine until Data 2500 would show up either as a Royal Rumble entrant or to do a run in during a match. You immediately knew something was cooking as "The Dude" as we call him wasn't on the roster and didn't walk or run but rather floated to the ring. I'd dive off the couch to yank the cartridge which kept the total erasure from happening maybe once out of at least 5-6 times.
Giant weapons is something I barely see mention of online and never in the manner we consistently achieved the easter egg. To do so, enter a 2 player King of the Ring tag tournament with a created player and The Undertaker. Win the first match and every weapon you get in the second round match should be RIDICULOUSLY big.
Please comment if you manage to get some giant weapons using that technique. My memory is Swiss cheese but my friends & I spent SO many hours playing that game I'll never forget those quirks nor the fun had.
Wow, imagine if Rockstar did make that ECW video game.
I love how you got "Double J" to go along with the David Lockett thing. That's awesome. Of course, you know how to spell it, right? That's L-O _haha_ C-K _haha_ E double T. Ain't he great?
Yo you shouting out WrestlingBios !? You a real one 😁
My friends and I mainly used strikes and grapples so we made custom versions of wrestlers called “supers” that had maxed out head/body/arms stats with 1s in legs and flying. Lol. The supers ended up dominating survival mode, I will say.
Even as a non wrestling fan I love the aki wrestling games. They were my favorite n64 games n always always a special space during my teenager years
For me WCW NWO Revenge was the best.
You are correct
My favorite wrestling game of all time thus far
Just finished. Couldn't have said it better myself. Perfect Mini History of the game and AKI. I hear David Lockett has watched it 4 times.
Ps I swear you say "Mean Cliff" when you're with Best Friend Jeffrey 😂
Tremendous video! So many good memories - and a 🌟wild🌟slapnuts🌟appears🌟
I was a Smackdown 2 guy through and through, still this video was class
This game is my instant memory go to of wrestling game. It proved sometimes less is more
This is a great video. I love No Mercy. I played it for hours on end.
I started my wrestling video game experience with TAG TEAM WRESTLING.
Tom, you are a gem.
Hctp for me is the 🐐
It's not an opinion its a fact homie
I had a glitched copy, I distinctly remember there being a statistics table in the options the first time I played it after opening it on Christmas day. I exited the options menu and when I checked again, the stats table was gone. It wouldn't even return after formatting the cart.
Half entrances have nothing to do with space saving. It was because they didn't have time to finish them and they were very buggy when they were under crunch, so the ring walk was cut to save dev time. The animations are all still on the cart and functional, just buggy. If they cut entrance length to save space for other stuff then they failed bc the content is still in the cartridge just unused. Not the only dropped content in the game that still on cart.
-Source: I'm a WWF No Mercy modder known for arena retexturing and hacking since 2007. Former member of The No Mercy Zone forum, and former lead admin at No Mercy Modstation, circa 2009
I love that Wrestling BIos got a mention that's so cool :)
If it wasn’t for no mercy we wouldn’t have gotten all the smackdown variations, including the greatest one of all, Smackdown: Here Comes The Pain.
Lovely stuff. Sold my 64 and all my games a few years ago, regretted it since.
Love the Wrestlingbios shout out!
5:58 I have this game, it's pretty good, more arcadey than the usual firepro, a bit more like Slam Masters but you still have to time the inputs, I feel it gives you more leeway than the standard FP games of the era though.
Loved this game as a kid! I would always just equip Lita with Throat Thrust 02 and go into the survival mode. I loved to write down everyone I eliminated for pretty much no reason 😅
Best game ever = Smackdown 2 for ps1
I never got no mercy. I had war zone and thats where my love of wrestling games came from, then went to WrestleMania 2000. I skipped no mercy for some reason.
After that I saved all my chore money every year for the smackdown vs raws until I got a Xbox 360, then I moved on to gta4 until I got the ring of death. I stepped away from gaming until my brother gave me his PS3 and the very last wrestling game I ever bought or played was WWE 2k with the special flip cover with Daniel Bryan. I havent played another wrestling game ever since. Growing up I didn't think games would get so expensive but adult me said "nah we got bills now my boy" 😂
I feel that that’s why realistically only buying 2 more games in my life lol
Would have been cooler if Mideon was in the game...
His head/attire was in the creation section.
Golden time for wrestling games
I got one of the glitched cartridges. Toys R Us was nice enough to take it back and exchange it for a new one at no charge. That whole comment really dated me just now, didn’t it?
Nothing will beat Revenge for me personally. That game game is WCW just as much as Nitro or PPVs were in my mind.😊
Revenge was the Peak. No Mercy is the same game with a rebrand IMO
@aporkpiepizza I love em both. I wish Revenge had more match types like No Mercy has, but nothing gets me more pumped than the opening music on Revenge after the Rumble Pak detected screen.
Please please please do a video like this on the evolution of the smackdown series leading to the ultimate game here comes the pain.
Loved No Mercy. Had it on the N64 & after it's unfortunate demise thanks to my cat & a cup of tea😂😂😂 I had it on an N64 emulator up until 2021... been itching to play through any game like this again & my God I can't wait for #UPW's demo later this year & it's release in 2025.
Speaking of "glitches"in WWE No Mercy, there's a supposed cheat that added a match like the one from the David Arquette WCW movie with the 3 cages. Supposedly it was a steel cage match then you would climb a ladder into a second ring with another steel cage, then climb another ladder into a 3rd ring with a 3rd cage. I never got it to work. 😢
Best. Game. EVER!!