WWF No Mercy - All N64 Games

[Cube]

Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits: Volume 1
 

• NA release: 14th November 2000
• PAL release: N/A
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Digital Eclipse
• Publisher: Midway
• N64 Magazine Score: 71%

The second retro compilation on Nintendo 64, this time for Midway’s classic arcade games, which generally aren’t as well remembered as the likes of Namco’s. The menu is much nicer than Namco Museum 64, and gives you a look at the arcade machines, but is still fairly bland. The only extra feature is a short and simple quiz about the games. There’s six in this compilation, with a lot of overlay with Williams Arcade’s Greatest Hits on the SNES.

Defender

Use the tiny map at the top to dart back and forth, to blow up aliens before they capture civilians. It feels a bit too small on N64, so it can be difficult to see things.

Robotron 2048

The N64 had its own really good Robotron game, now here’s the original twin-stick shooter. It plays quite well, even if the screen gets very busy.

Root Beer Tapper

I had no idea that this non-alcoholic version of Tapper existed. Patrons will enter the bar on the left, and you have to quickly fill glasses and slide them down. Simple, but probably the most playable game in this collection.

Joust

Use a bird and a stick to stab your foes, however, you have to be extremely precise – another example of a game designed for someone’s face to be right next to an arcade screen.

Spy Hunter

Shoot your way through cars in this Bond-inspired game. It does show how quickly arcade graphics evolved. I kept blowing up civilians without realising they were civilians.

Sinistar

I’d never heard of this one before. It’s like an easy to control Asteroids with enemies, and extremely hard to see due to how scaled down everything feels.

___

If you specifically wanted these games on N64, they’re fine, although they don’t translate as well to a TV screen (especially with the N64’s resolution) compared to the games in Namco’s collection.

Poor

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All six games have been perfectly converted by Digital Eclipse – the team behind last year’s diddy Game Boy versions – and the analogue stick is a superb replacement for those chunky black arcade joysticks. It’s just a shame that, aside from a laughably poor trivia quiz sub-game and a clunky 3D ‘virtual-reality arcade’ that’s plainly been coded in a spare lunchtime, the cart’s devoid of extras.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #50

Remake or remaster?

We definitely need a new Midway collection, if licensing allows (which, considering none are on Arcade Archives yet, seems unlikely). The last is 2012’s Midway Arcade Origins, which at least is backwards compatible on Xbox One/Series, but never got a PC version. I did have a fever dream where Tapper still appeared in some imaginary Wreck-It Ralph sequel about the internet.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits: Volume 1

[Cube]

WWF No Mercy
 

• NA release: 17th November 2000
• PAL release: 15th December 2000
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Asmik Ace, AKI
• Publisher: THQ
• N64 Magazine Score: 92%

The crown jewel of wrestling games, built upon a series of games across the N64’s lifetime. The gameplay style was started in WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, while WWF WrestleMania 2000 brought the atmosphere that came with the WWF licence. The gameplay was made to be much smoother in Virtual Pro Wrestling 2, and now all that is combined in WWF No Mercy.

One thing that is testament to how great the game was considered to be, was a nasty bug the game had – it would randomly delete everything stored on the cartridge. Despite this, the game was still loved and is fondly remembered. A later revision fixed the issue, but also removed blood from the game. The core wrestling was great, Create-A-Wrestler improved even more, and there was a ton of modes. One mode not many people know about is a secret championship.

If you complete the Game Boy Color version of WWF No Mercy and import the character into the N64 game, The Rock will introduce you as a new superstar. HHH is extremely worried about this, and his wife comes up with a plan to make a fool of you by forcing you to fight other superstars before you can face him. There’s a lot of insults and swearing, and it’s all text based (no voices), but it’s a fun mode. One slight catch: The GBC version of No Mercy never came out. You need to use codes to access this extra campaign.

WWF No Mercy is a great wrestling game with a ton of modes and features, and is the culmination of a lot of work throughout the entire lifespan of the N64.

Great

Quote

With the Hardcore rules selected, you can throw your opponent out of the ring area and back up towards the entrance. From there you can propel them backstage, where there are several more rooms Each arena has slightly different areas to explore, all with weapons scarred round about – dustbins, microphones, chairs, even and odd bunch of roses. When you drop (or throw) a weapon, it doesn’t just vanish form existence – you can pick it up again or go find a new one. We’ve managed to get four weapons plus two sets of corner stairs into the ring at the same time.

Alan Maddrell, N64 Magazine #49

Remake or remaster?

The developers of current wrestling games need to look at No Mercy and figure out what made it special.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get WWF No Mercy.

[Dcubed]

You’ll probably never get another wrestling game like No Mercy ever again.

I suspect that the main reason why it turned out so well is because Aki had the opportunity to rapidly iterate and refine their N64 wrestling engine with multiple releases across the console’s lifetime (something that they were able to repeat with the Style Boutique series when they became Syn Sophia).  You could make substantial retail releases very quickly with small dev teams in a reasonable manner with a reasonable budget back then.  Now though? You’d be lucky to get one quality game out within an entire console generation.

Edited 10 hours ago by Dcubed

[Helmsly]

WWF No Mercy really is one of the most fun Wrestling games of all time, as well one of the N64's best titles. Like Cube mentioned, it was like accumulation all everything AKI had done with their previous Wrestling games all rolled into one.

Much like Wrestlemania 2000, I spent a lot of time playing this game because of how much fun it was. The gameplay was as solid as ever but also, there were so many options and match types you could do, as well as story mode and of course create your own wrestlers.

The customisation of the game matches was great too. For example, you could make it so a Royal Rumble would only accept eliminations if you knocked a wrestler out or first blood, which meant you could leave the ring and fight backstage. You could essentially turn one match type into something else completely different. Being able to change matches this way meant of all the different match types on offer, there were multiple ways to play them.

And also, as always with all the AKI Wraslin games, you could tell they had fun making it. It just came through so well, from the fun stuff you could do and unlock, the funny stuff said in story mode to the voice samples in the background music. To this day I still have the menu music occasionally pop into my head:

They made the game have somewhat of its own personality rather then just churn out a licensed WWE game and be done with it and so aside from being a great game is a memorable one too. AKI knew what they were doing an did it so well.

 

Everything about this game was pretty much as perfect as it could have been on N64 hardware, I believe the only negatives compared to the older games was that the framerate was lower then the other and the entrances were all the same unlike the re-created ones in Wrestlemania 2000. That and a few wrestlers not making the roster.

It's a game I'd love to see come to NSO but I have to assume the changes are slim (we got Goldeneye so there's always a chance).

 

1 hour ago, Cube said:

One thing that is testament to how great the game was considered to be, was a nasty bug the game had – it would randomly delete everything stored on the cartridge. Despite this, the game was still loved and is fondly remembered. A later revision fixed the issue, but also removed blood from the game. The core wrestling was great, Create-A-Wrestler improved even more, and there was a ton of modes. One mode not many people know about is a secret championship.

Yes this was incredibly annoying. The version of No Mercy that I borrowed had the save glitch and then when we got a newer version we found out they removed the blood, which wasn't a major deal but the funny thing was you could still play a First Blood match. As I remember it, Wrestlers still "bled" in that match but you just couldn't see it.