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

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

WWF No Mercy was the Final Fantasy VII of wrestling games. The gamechanger that became the standard.

“THE MAN BREEZE… something Shawn Michaels experienced during his caps phase.” GOD I love Tom 😂😂😂

It’s funny how the possibly best wrestling name is named after one of the many random PPVs

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.

Great video! No mention of No Mercy spiritual successor Ultra Pro Wrestling coming 2025 tho??

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 spent sooo much time playing this game on N64.

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.

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.

👋

You didn't mention ultra pro wrestling

This game has always been one of my favorite wrestling games if not my favorite

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.

You guys know about Ultra Pro Wrestling, right?!

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!

One of the best games of all time.

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!

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.

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.

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.

“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!

When I first saw the title of the video, I was hoping we'd get Tom talking about this. Great work here.

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

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. 😀

Shoutout to Wrestling Bios!!

Fantastic video essay. Excellent work 🫡

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.

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.

The wrestler portraits in the background are beautiful. They would look incredible in anyone's home!

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.

Fantastic video! Love how in depth it is, keep up the great work!

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 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.

First Fire Pro Wrestling game I played was on GBA and it was so good, can't believe its still going to this day

Let's go Tom! I'm here for this, even though I've never actually played this game and I've always wanted to

My game deleted so much but I always just beat it 100 percent again cause I loved it

I just wanted to say thank you for making this. These games were a big part of what made me a wrestling fan.

Wow, imagine if Rockstar did make that ECW video game.

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

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.

Would have been cooler if Mideon was in the game...

I love Tom telling me stories

Tom is so good at making every video watchable no matter the topic

My favorite was playing 4 player Royal Rumble and getting thrown out only to control the next entrant: The Godfather's Ho!

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)👀

This game was one of the greatest birthday gifts of my young life

Best game ever = Smackdown 2 for ps1

This is my most played game of all time along with GoldenEye 007. Great work as always Tom and Cultaholic 👏🏾🔥

I still play it to this day on my channel. The gameplay still holds up...

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.

Yo you shouting out WrestlingBios !? You a real one 😁

Tremendous video! So many good memories - and a 🌟wild🌟slapnuts🌟appears🌟

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.

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.

Tom! This was INCREDIBLE! More please!

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.

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.

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.

I love the concept of tom giving us a wha happun type wrestling related gaming specials from time to time. Good bad and weird.

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" 😂

This is a great video. I love No Mercy. I played it for hours on end.

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

I love that Wrestling BIos got a mention that's so cool :)

amazing video!

Love the Wrestlingbios shout out!

Awesome game! Great video!

I had to laugh at your "Beast". I had a blue-haired character named Wildabeast! Mine was more of a zany cruiserweight, so I think that's where the similarities end, but still funny!

For me WCW NWO Revenge was the best.

Please please please do a video like this on the evolution of the smackdown series leading to the ultimate game here comes the pain.

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 😂

Lovely stuff. Sold my 64 and all my games a few years ago, regretted it since.

Was that really Road Dogg on the intro?

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.

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.

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. 😢

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 🌹🇬🇧👌

I started my wrestling video game experience with TAG TEAM WRESTLING.

I was a Smackdown 2 guy through and through, still this video was class

Omg I used to fucking love power move pro wrestling! You just brought back so many memories. I'd completely forgot about that one.

Def jam vendetta and fight for New York are great games

This game is my instant memory go to of wrestling game. It proved sometimes less is more

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?

My favorite wrestling game of all time thus far

DIG DIG DIGGITY DIG DIGGITY DOG!

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.

David "The Absolute Leg(end)" Lockett

The other day at 3am, for no reason: Me out loud: Dig diggity, Dig diggity dog............The Rock! Socko!

Nothing will beat Revenge for me personally. That game game is WCW just as much as Nitro or PPVs were in my mind.😊

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 😅

Chicago Illinois loves a good history lesson

It’s still a brilliant game and I have so many memories with friends playing this, with a pizza and drinks back in school. Sadly the spiritual sequel turned out to be unplayable and have less than half the features.

I know that the Def Jame games are well received, but in a perfect world AKI somehow would have worked with Acclaim to make the Legends Of Wrestling games worth anything besides their rosters.

Bought two copies from different stores on release in the UK....neither copy worked. The cart didn't even start. And about 8 of my school friends had the same problem.