WWF War Zone

Image Source: Game

Written By: Mark Armstrong

Publisher: Acclaim Sports
Developer: Iguana West and Probe Entertainment (GB)
Genre: Wrestling
Series: N/A
Released: August 11 1998 (US) and August 21 1998 (UK)
Certificate: 15+ (Nowadays 16)
Consoles: N64, PS1 and GB

The modern era of wrestling videogames truly began with WWF War Zone.

From the late 1980s onwards, the WWF, as well as WCW, had aimed to provide a videogame product for its fans. They were very limited and not exactly advanced when it came to top-level graphics or large-scale rosters; prior to 1998, WWF WrestleFest is arguably the only game that is still remembered fondly by fans. More to the point, WrestleMania: The Arcade Game, released in 1995, and In Your House from the following year only slightly resembled the WWF product at the time, and serious gamers must have wondered at the time if there would ever be a respectable WWF game. WCW/nWo World Tour in 1997 brought the genre to life, and WCW/nWo Revenge took things even further upon its late 1998 release. Still, despite the ratings perhaps suggesting otherwise, the WWF remained the most recognisable wrestling organisation in the world, and so it would take a landmark WWF game to truly kick the genre into high gear.

That finally came in 1998 with War Zone. Given the WWF's renewed popularity due to its recently-introduced Attitude, it was inevitable that there would be a videogame to accompany the new-look WWF, and since a new generation of gaming consoles had yet to receive a WWF title worthy of the platforms, the stars all aligned to give us War Zone, which would finally allow gamers to truly relive WWF action with better graphics and more options than ever before.

The roster consisted of sixteen wrestlers, but what a line-up it was. Clearly chosen in late 1997 (and by the way, how bizarre is it that there wasn't one WWF game released in 1997?), the crew included Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Kane, Mankind, The Rock, Triple H, Goldust, Ken Shamrock, Faarooq, The Headbangers, Owen Hart, Bret Hart, British Bulldog and Ahmed Johnson (the last three had departed the WWF by the time of its release). Also noteworthy were the first ever hidden characters in a WWF game, those being Dude Love and Cactus Jack, along with a few fictional characters. Each wrestler had two attires (Austin and Goldust had four), and just as exciting as the plethora of debuting performers (this was Austin's first WWF game, although he had previously appeared on a WCW game when he was Stunning Steve) were the fact that all wrestlers had full move sets, theme songs (which were midi versions on Nintendo 64) and even voices, occasionally blurting out their catch phrases or selling moves through grunts and groans. Considering what WWF fans had been receiving in previous games (Diesel wasn't on WrestleMania: The Arcade Game, and he had reigned as WWF Champion for most of the previous year), this was huge, and a big part of its appeal at the time. Revenge may have had more grapplers, but they didn't have Austin, Rock, Michaels, Undertaker etc.

The gameplay was hit-and-miss. The thought process was logical, as the intention was to make players earn the bigger moves through increasingly tough button combinations. But it only made matches harder than they needed to be; the button combo system was fun at the time, but it was only when future games opted for one button per move that people realised how awkward this could be. Still, it remained miles better than what the likes of In Your House had offered in the ring; and they certainly didn't offer moves such as the Stone Cold Stunner, the Mandible Claw or the weapon-based attacks using the likes of chairs and televisions.

Speaking of which: a Weapons match was amongst the options on offer. As well as standard bouts, we had a Steel Cage match, a Royal Rumble and a Gauntlet. This may all sound very simple, but this was 1998, when previous games had been based around one match type, so to have a small-scale version of WWF stipulation matches all in one place was pretty cool. The Acclaim team had planned to also provide a Ladder match, but they were unable to work the mechanics of the match into the game without compromising one's entertainment, so the decision was made to not include it. The only big downside was the inability to pick your opponents, meaning that you could only put on the match that you really wanted if you were playing against a friend.

The game's biggest draw was probably the Create A Wrestler feature. This wasn't the first game to boast the option, but it was definitely the game that popularised it, especially with 30 save slots for created characters and costume items relating to wrestlers not on the game, such as Taka Michinoku and Marc Mero. Again, it may sound very simple, but if you were a wrestling fan in 1998, this feature was the coolest thing ever. Every single wrestling game of value has included the Create A Wrestler feature since, which should demonstrate how influential this was.

There was a single-player mode named Challenge whereby you worked your way up the WWF ranks, defeating the top ten names with a wrestler of your choice until you won the Intercontinental Championship and finally the WWF Championship. Title wins were greeted with magazine front covers, and you would have to navigate through the occasional grudge match with a previously-defeated adversary, usually with a big stipulation attached. It was a basic premise, but it was effective, and each wrestler had a different unlockable item if you completed Challenge with him, so for instance, winning Challenge with Mankind unlocked Cactus and Dude, whilst winning with Shawn or HHH would provide items with which to create female wrestlers. The downside was that, due to save data issues, you had to immediately save the game after finishing the mode, otherwise your hard work was all for naught. That's 1998 gaming for you.

Elsewhere, a Training facility allowed you to practice moves in a gym environment, allowing you to improve your skills without having to take unnecessary chances in the likes of Challenge. Vince McMahon and Jim Ross provided commentary. The graphics were based on actual filming of the performers executing their moves in a specific setting, meaning that the graphics looked very realistic, for the performers at least (the arena, modelled on Raw Is War, was good but nothing to shout about; a WrestleMania ring would be unlocked as well, if you had the patience of a saint to win Challenge and then beat everyone on the roster again). Entrances consisted of quick poses at the top of the aisle, which was slightly disappointing. A Rankings system kept a note of wins and losses, and which wrestlers could boast the best records. The WWF Attitude logo watermark was present on the screen during singles matches. There were crowd chants and occasional hecklers, as well as widespread booing for those who kept repeating moves. Finally, the PlayStation version opened with a full video promoting the Attitude product, even if the content of the game then seemed outdated by comparison (the WWF of mid-1998 was very different to even the WWF of late 1997).

By 1998 standards, War Zone was fantastic fun. It must be said that Revenge, released the same year, totally outclassed it from a grappling standpoint, and also boasted a much larger roster. However, War Zone was a WWF product and, for that reason, it had the biggest impact in officially making wrestling videogames cool. Everything was fresh, from the line-up to the graphics to the Create A Wrestler option, and whilst it all seems very simple and limited in 2017, back in 1998 this was one fantastic package which completely blew away any WWF game which had come before it. Attitude would move things along even further, before THQ got the WWF licence in 1999 and things began to develop tenfold, eventually reaching unimaginable levels in terms of replicating the actual product. Nevertheless, it all had to start somewhere, and although wrestling games had been around for some time, War Zone was the first to take things seriously and treat the wrestling fan/videogamer crossover with respect, delivering a product that also happened to be very entertaining. The rating below is by the standards of the time, rather than by modern benchmarks, but if you can appreciate it for what it is, nearly 20 years later, War Zone remains one of the most fun wrestling games ever, and a vital chapter in the history of wrestling - and especially WWF/WWE - videogames.

Overall Rating: 8.5/10 - Excellent

WWF Attitude

Image Source: GameXchange

Written By: Mark Armstrong

Publisher: Acclaim Sports
Developer: Iguana West
Genre: Wrestling
Series: N/A
Released: July 31 1999 (US) and September 3 1999 (UK)
Certificate: 15+ (Nowadays 16)
Consoles: N64, PS1, Dreamcast and GBC

The sequel to the best-selling WWF War Zone game, WWF Attitude looked to improve upon virtually everything that was memorable in War Zone, as well as adding several new features. At the time, it received a lot of praise, and coming at the very peak of the iconic Attitude Era, it remains fondly remembered by fans who bought the game at the time. But does Attitude still hold up today, more than 17 years later?

Let's begin with the roster: with more than 30 characters when including hidden wrestlers, Attitude was the first WWF game to feature enough talent for a full-on, 30-man Royal Rumble. Along with the top WWF names like Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker, Kane, Mankind, Triple H and others, the game provided the console debuts for many classic Attitude names such as The New Age Outlaws, X-Pac, Chyna, Sable, Edge, Christian, Val Venis, Faarooq, Bradshaw and more. Interesting characters included The Big Boss Man, Dr. Death (who had left the WWF long before Attitude was released) and Vince McMahon, who was hidden on the game. Since this was during the era when gamers relied on cheats sections in magazines to discover how to unlock content, and since said magazines at the time weren't averse to throwing in all sorts of potential unlockables regardless of whether or not they were actually true, there were several rumoured unlockable characters which ended up being red herrings, most notably Test and even Big Show, who was never scheduled to be on the game having arrived in the WWF too late to join the party, so to speak. So, although the game was released in the latter half of 1999, the roster was a fairer reflection of the (incredibly popular) crew of late 1998.

Create A Wrestler was back and more in-depth than ever, although it had a flaw that I will explain later when covering another aspect of the game. More notable was the debut of Create A PPV, whereby you could create a card of up to eight matches featuring those on the roster in a series of bouts similar to real-life supershows such as WrestleMania and SummerSlam. It might sound basic now, but this was innovative back in 1999. Even better was the unofficial Create An Arena option, a superb feature which allowed you to customise basic parts of an arena, using a limited yet relevant collection of logos for major WWF PPV events and television shows. It's amazing that no other WWF/WWE game would include the feature until WWE '12, more than a decade later, and that the mode has arguably only began reaching its true potential in the last few years, considering that it first made it onto a WWF/WWE title nearly two decades ago.

The game provided the debut for many match types, such as Last Man Standing, First Blood, I Quit (which was more like a Submission bout, admittedly), Finisher, Two Out Of Three Falls and format variations such as a huge four-way tag consisting of four teams. Even though four characters remained on-screen at one time, Attitude was able to include match types that haven't been seen even in modern titles, such as 4-on-4 Survivor Series bouts. It's strange in hindsight that nobody questioned how the likes of Hell In A Cell and Ladder matches weren't included, although Acclaim's decision to use actual video footage of the WWF stars, which was modified using computer technology to end up as a playable videogame, likely made such match types almost an impossibility to include in the game, at least at that point. Alongside Raw, there were arenas for House Show and a "PPV" venue, even though all were three were similar and, whilst realistic, didn't quite resemble their actual incarnations.

The game revamped its single-player mode as Career, which saw you climb the WWF ranks and win the top titles on PPV events, whilst unlocking wrestlers and arena parts, as well as War Zone-style "bonuses", along the way. Overall, it was an improvement on Challenge mode in War Zone, featuring more matches and generally being a stronger experience (you competed on House Shows to begin with, then Heat, then Raw, and finally PPV events). However, some matches were ridiculously hard; in particular, three-on-one Falls Count Anywhere Handicap matches, with you as the lone wolf for lack of a better term, was basically a way for you to lose, so difficult was it to pull out a win in these situations.

Other notes: commentary was provided by Shane McMahon and Jerry Lawler; Shane filled in for Jim Ross, who was recovering from Bell's Palsy at the time, although it's interesting that JR's actual temporary replacement Michael Cole wasn't drafted in for the task (Shane's commentary was limited to Heat). The Nintendo 64 game had proper entrance themes for the first time, which was a vast improvement on the (admittedly funky) midi versions on the N64 version of War Zone. Wrestlers had full entrances for the first time, and Triple H even did his full pre-match promo which included calling out "that fat-ass sitting on the couch", referencing the player. Wrestlers had pre-match comments mostly consisting of catch phrases, many involving swearing or innuendo (Goldust's line of "On your knees, bitch!" and "Kiss my golden ass!" probably wouldn't be included in a modern-day WWE 2K game). An Everyone/Teen option allowed you to toggle between a family-friendly and an adult-orientated experience, which was a nice touch. All of the genuine characters had up to four attires, but they were much easier to access on the PS1 version (actually, they were almost impossible to access on the N64 version, now that I think about it).

Finally, the game was dedicated to Owen Hart, who sadly died a few months before Attitude was released, but after his character had been locked down for the game. Despite this dedication, Owen has never returned to a WWF/WWE game since, for understandable reasons. It's debatable as to whether we'll see Owen back in a game someday, but until then, Attitude marked the videogame farewell for Owen, and we get a nice reminder as to how much he meant to so many with his dedication as the game loads.

On the downside, the control scheme hadn't been changed to make it more user-friendly; if anything, it was less user-friendly this time around, and at a time when the WWF product consisted of many crazy bumps and big-time finishers, with a major reduction on the focus of actual wrestling, it was annoying to see two out of every three exchanges begin with a hammerlock or something similar which was hardly seen on Raw throughout the entire year, never mind a few times per match. Blood was in the game but was used almost comically, as characters would receive some amusingly deep cuts in strange areas such as their hands or their knees, despite wearing long tights. Career mode, as stated, could be pretty frustrating for a variety of reasons, most notably the difficulty of multiplayer bouts and the occasional bug whereby save data would be removed, after completing a lengthy and exhausting single-player mode. The memory of the game also hindered Create A Wrestler (I said I'd come back to it!), since the game took up so much data that you could barely save a handful of characters, despite there being a decent number of slots available. Weapons were difficult to handle, and despite some references to backstage brawling when the game was being hyped up, this ended up being a fantasy as backstage areas were nowhere to be seen, allowing WCW Mayhem to become the first game to offer this feature later in the year.

Perhaps the biggest flaw was the aforementioned lack of improvement with the control scheme, mostly due to the success of the wrestling engine in WCW/nWo Revenge. Revenge and its predecessor World Tour, produced for WCW by THQ, both provided a simple, logical and addictive gameplay experience, which included one- or two-button controls for virtually everything. It's understandable that War Zone would be outclassed in this area, because World Tour was only moderately successful upon its 1997 release and Revenge came out after War Zone did, but for Attitude not to adjust its approach to the in-ring product, almost a year after everyone was raving about the gameplay on Revenge, is pretty strange. This probably explains why the WWF chose not to renew its licence with Acclaim after Attitude was released, and chose to partner with none other than THQ. The change would be massively successful for the WWF and THQ, with WrestleMania 2000 and SmackDown! kicking off an incredible era which continues, albeit to less praise, to this very day. Acclaim, which had been producing WWF games for a decade prior to Attitude, would enter into an agreement with ECW and produce two games for that organisation, and they would provide three Legends Of Wrestling games in the early 2000s before the company would ultimately fold.

Still, despite the negatives, on the whole Attitude gave fans a strong end to the Acclaim era. Ignoring the (already) outdated control scheme, Attitude improved upon War Zone in almost every way possible, and don't forget the general sludge that WWF fans had to bear in the years before War Zone. Therefore, Attitude still seemed like the best wrestling game yet upon its release, even though it didn't meet many fans' expectations. Had the THQ era not begun immediately afterwards with WrestleMania 2000, Attitude might be remembered more fondly, but at the time it was treated like a true main eventer, and although it hasn't aged well, Attitude remains a milestone in the history of wrestling videogames, and a good climax to the final era before the THQ era for WWF/WWE videogames.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10 - Good

WWF WrestleMania 2000

Image Source: Amazon

Written By: Mark Armstrong

Publisher: THQ
Developer: AKI Corporation, Asmik Ace Entertainment (Natsume for GBC)
Genre: Wrestling
Series: N/A
Released: October 31 1999 (US) and October 12 1999 (UK)
Certificate: 15+ (Nowadays 16)
Consoles: N64 and GBC

It's hard to imagine in the modern wrestling world where one WWE videogame is released each year, and has been published by 2K Sports since 2013 (and THQ for a long time before that), but in the autumn of 1999, two major WWF games were released by two different publishers. Acclaim released the much-anticipated WWF Attitude in August/September of 1999 but, by then, the WWF had already agreed a deal for THQ to become its new videogame developer. Wasting no time, WrestleMania 2000 would be their first game, and it would hit stores in time for the final Christmas season of the millennium (which makes it sound really grand, doesn't it?).

This would mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new one; the Acclaim period had seen the WWF grow and improve its videogame output, but even the latter titles like War Zone and Attitude, whilst fun at the time, were far from flawless games and were mostly acceptable due to the WWF branding (see the subsequent ECW Hardcore Revolution, which was essentially an ECW version of Attitude, which didn't get great reviews). THQ, on the other hand, had built up a great deal of goodwill with its WCW games World Tour and, in particular, Revenge, which was released in late 1998 and, from a gameplay standpoint, blew any of Acclaim's titles away. So, one can understand why the WWF would enter into a working relationship with THQ, and why fans were hyped when news came out that THQ would be developing a WWF game, WrestleMania 2000 as a Nintendo 64 exclusive, for the first time.

In the end, WM 2000 ended up being the strongest wrestling game to date at that point. The gameplay was almost exactly the same as that of Revenge, but a certain number of WWF elements, and features seen in previous WWF titles, were mixed in, along with some new innovations not seen in a WWF game before, all of which gave fans a pretty strong package, and a fine way to sign off the millennium.

The wrestling gameplay was simple but very effective: in contrast to Acclaim titles where they tried to use its wrestling control scheme in the context of a real fight by having the more important moves requiring more complicated and tougher controls (which is understandable, or at least it was at the time), in WM 2000 (and Revenge before that), moves almost entirely revolved around the "A" button. A quick press from a tie-up executed basic moves, and holding the button down for a few seconds while the opponent was stunned allowed you to execute more powerful moves. The HUDs were colour-based, with green representing 100% health and 50% momentum at the start of every match, and building up to the red level which would gradually increase in speed until the word SPECIAL covered the HUD, creating a short window of time when you could execute a finishing move by using the toggle stick (a smart gamer would hit the finisher twice or even three times during this period, depending how long it took to hit the move, for example, a Stone Cold Stunner was much quicker than a People's Elbow). In contrast, for the weakened opponent, their HUD would change colour to light blue and then dark blue, which eventually led to DANGER covering their HUD. If you were in the DANGER zone, chances are that you were about to lose, whereas SPECIAL suggested that you were one big move away from victory. It was all so simple, yet it worked perfectly, and although the system had already been used in Revenge, it had not been seen by hardcore WWF fans, meaning that Federation followers were wowed by the gameplay in WM 2000, making it very hard to return to the Acclaim control scheme.

Elsewhere, this was the first WWF game to feature a full Season-style mode, known as Road To WrestleMania. You played through a year of WWF action with the occasional storylines, with victories on TV leading to PPV title matches, and with a character's status determining their fate for the most part (so Steve Austin, The Rock and co were in the main events, the likes of Mideon and Viscera were further down the card etc). As with the control scheme, its success lied in its simplicity, especially compared to the Career mode in Attitude which was hit-and-miss on occasion (remember the unexpected and incredibly tough 3-on-1 Handicap matches in Attitude's Career mode?). Of course, it would be topped in future games, but the mode (which featured occasional cut-scenes and storylines, such as the Test-Stephanie McMahon partnership and Jim Ross calling WrestleMania with Jerry Lawler) was a lot of fun at the time, and was the best single-player mode on a wrestling game to date at that point.

The match types were a bit sparse: besides the usual singles and tag bouts, there was only Triple Threat, Hardcore and Steel Cage options, alongside Royal Rumble and King Of The Ring. Since this was in the days before the likes of Hell In A Cell and Ladder bouts were seen in WWF/WWE games, though, this can be forgiven slightly, and the gameplay made up for the lack of stipulation bouts on offer. This was the first WWF game to offer authentic arenas (War Zone and Attitude's versions of the WWF Raw venue looked similar to the real thing, but they didn't boast the small touches and banners that the same arena did in this game): Raw, Heat, Royal Rumble 1999, WrestleMania (a strange hybrid of the WM XV and WM 2000 sets), King Of The Ring 1998, SummerSlam 1998 and Survivor Series 1998 were all here, complete with pre-match background shots like those used on television (this was the first game to provide that feature). Inside the arenas, the fans had signs specific to the wrestlers for the first time (including multi-part "R-O-C-K" letters for you-know-who).

The roster featured all the big WWF names of the day, including Chris Jericho who had only debuted in the company a couple of months earlier (his character model from WCW/nWo Revenge was presumably reused here), so the final roster total of 57 was the highest ever in a WWF game at that time. Full entrances were here, from the motions to the music to the never-before-seen-in-a-game entrance videos (even if they did consist of a few highly pixelated screenshots; and the theme songs weren't of the highest quality either, although Revenge didn't have any actual entrance music). Although the character models looked almost cartoonish, it didn't make a difference presentation-wise, because everybody looked authentic, more so than in any wrestling game ever. And whilst Revenge lacked a true Create A Wrestler option (you could adapt wrestler attires which helped), the feature was prominent in WM 2000, if a little basic, so you could create the likes of Kurt Angle and The Dudley Boyz in no time, as well as being able to customise every aspect of an existing wrestler's attire, aside from their move sets.. A Create A PPV option (which allowed for a whopping 15 matches) and a mini Create A Championship option (you used one of the existing titles and gave it a new name) were the icing on the cake. Oh, and who remembers the cool five-minute opening video to the game which recreated scenes from actual television within the game, such as the Ministry "sacrificing" Stephanie only for Stone Cold to make the save?

(One last thing: there were five wrestlers on the cover of the game, but Steve Austin was not one of them; and he would only appear on the covers of a few more games in the future, despite still being massively popular in spite of his neck injury. Strange, eh?)

For all the hype that Attitude received and for the praise that Revenge rightly earned, WrestleMania 2000, with less hype and an almost-ignored level of promotion and feedback, blew both games out of the water: it outclassed Attitude greatly in the ring, it built upon the weaker areas in Revenge, and added its own unique touches and a star-studded roster from the apex of the Attitude Era to close out the millennium in grand fashion. WrestleMania 2000 was the best wrestling game ever at that time, but its own areas for improvement would be matched and then some by its highly-regarded successor No Mercy. Nevertheless, for what it's worth, WM 2000 was awesome, and a perfect snapshot of wrestling's greatest ever era.

Overall Rating: 9/10 - Outstanding

WWF No Mercy

Image Source: Amazon

Written By: Mark Armstrong

Publisher: THQ
Developer: AKI Corporation and Asmik Ace Entertainment
Genre: Wrestling
Series: N/A
Released: November 17 2000 (US) and December 15 2000 (UK)
Certificate: 15+ (Nowadays 16)
Consoles: N64

WWF No Mercy, the successor to WrestleMania 2000, was released in late 2000, on a console which didn't allow for character models with polygons greater than 64-bit and which didn't possess any level of video streaming. The roster has greatly changed and even the company name has been different for nearly 15 years. Plus, HD gaming was a long way off, and the feature set was basic compared to modern titles. So how is it that No Mercy remains so revered as possibly the greatest wrestling game ever? Well, I shall explain.

Firstly, its two main single-player modes were excellent for different reasons. Championship saw you pursue any one of seven titles as literally anybody on the game, and follow various story paths and lifelike plotlines (some of which directly mirrored reality, from the APA protecting you to a replica of the WWF Championship storyline heading into WrestleMania 2000). Crucially, whilst there were some matches that required you to win in order to continue, many offered alternate paths based on specific results. And to complete the mode in its entirety, you would have to lose matches in order to unlock these various endings. Sure, there were no voiceovers, but it was phenomenally entertaining and the use of on-screen text actually explained the mode's flexibility. It was a standard-bearer for such modes with literally tons of replay value.

The other main mode, Survival, was more simple but no less entertaining. It was basically one long Royal Rumble with everybody on the game entering, and with your goal being to stand tall as the winner. Even if you didn't win, you would be rewarded (as I will explain shortly), but it was a great feeling when you did manage to win the whole thing. Surprisingly simple yet incredibly addictive (and occasionally very frustrating too, to be fair), it's a wonder that no other game has included Survival since. These two modes alone would have made No Mercy a cracking game, but we're only just getting started.

The roster was a vintage collection of Attitude Era stars, which included all the top names (except Big Show), loads of newcomers (such as Kurt Angle) and almost every non-wrestling personality in the WWF at the time; even one of The Godfather's Hos was a playable character. It also had the first use of Legends in the form of Andre The Giant, and parts were available to create some faces not on the roster, like Gangrel and Mideon. With the largest roster to date in a wrestling game, and featuring almost everybody who could have been included at the time, the roster was a who's who of Attitude Era characters.

There were several new match types that its predecessor WM 2000 didn't boast, such as Special Referee, Iron Man and Ladder. Meanwhile, this was the first game to include full arenas for the B-level PPVs (No Mercy, Backlash and Armageddon), which with SmackDown! also being a new inclusion gave us ten full arenas in total. And it was the first WWF game on Nintendo 64 to include backstage brawling, with five simple yet very effective areas, all of which boasted room-specific props such as a pool table in the bar and the 18-wheeler truck in the parking lot.

The improvements didn't end there. A new SmackDown Mall shop option gave way to hundreds of unlockables (you earned cash for the shop in Championship and Survival, with you earning more money based on your performances in those modes). There were now 18 slots for Create A Wrestler, but as you could totally customise up to four attires, it essentially meant a whopping 72 characters to potentially make (plus you could assign different entrance themes to each attire, which you couldn't do in WM 2000). You could now put opponents through an announcer's table at ringside, even if the commentators themselves weren't present at ringside (although Jim Ross, Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole were all unlockable characters to use during matches). There were new weapons, including a bazooka, a huge slab of cheese and Mick Foley's first book. The graphics looked cooler and darker, giving a real mood to areas like the bar which had some LED features. Create A Wrestler was more in-depth, and items were named to make them easier to find. Wrestler faces looked more lifelike, even if some (such as Triple H) were a bit iffy. All titles which were claimed in Championship mode could now be defended in Exhibition once a story had been completed. There were new post-match celebration scenes, such as Rikishi dancing with Too Cool. And whilst the gameplay didn't really change, it was tweaked slightly to make it a little more realistic than in the previous game; but since it was already outstanding, the wrestling engine completed one amazing videogame package.

There were some flaws, though. The promise of blood being included came true, but blood effects were then removed (presumably by mistake) when fixing a data error, meaning that wrestlers would react as if they were bleeding even though they weren't. There were more new matches in its friendly rival SmackDown! 2 Know Your Role such as Hell In A Cell, Table and TLC. The small-scale Create A Championship option was quietly removed, whilst Create A PPV remained but was not improved in any significant way. And entrances would inexplicably end when a wrestler went past the stage, despite initial screenshots suggesting that the game would have full entrances (so, for example, Steve Austin would use what he describes as the "BMF" walk when coming out, but we wouldn't see his turnbuckle poses), which wasn't helped by the entrance videos being more pixelated than they were in WM 2000. (Also, although it didn't affect the N64 title, a planned Game Boy Color port of the game was eventually cancelled prior to its scheduled release.) As you may have guessed, though, the downsides were absolutely overwhelmed by the positive aspects of the game.

The superb single-player modes, the incredible gameplay and fighting engine, the big-name roster and the other new features and improvements all created one fantastic wrestling game, one that has arguably only been reached or surpassed on one or two occasions by any game since, purely from the standpoint of a fun, exciting and entertaining title. Future wrestling games would offer larger rosters, greater feature sets and even more options from an in-ring standpoint, such as more strategic submission grappling and crowd brawls, but in terms of an overall package, WWF No Mercy remains an all-time classic title. It wasn't quite flawless, but it was as close to perfection as one would expect; if the modern WWE 2K titles were as good as No Mercy, no fans would ever be complaining. A phenomenal wrestling game that all diehard fans should play.

Overall Rating: 9.5/10 - Classic