Challenging the Champ: How to Beat No Mercy

[RaychelSnr]

Most wrestling gamers still feel WWF: No Mercy was the greatest wrestling game ever made. We are now a decade past that landmark title and no game has yet to challenge No Mercy for the best wrestling game of all time. How can gaming companies replicate the success of No Mercy? Our very own Richard Chavez takes a look at that question in his article Challenging the Champ: How to Beat No Mercy.

Quote:

"There is no doubt that the Smackdown games sell a ton and will continue to do so; yet, we still aren't close to finding a suitable contender to the throne. If Yukes/THQ, Midway, or any other wrestling game developer wants to beat No Mercy, they need to follow these guidelines: consistency, simplicity, and attention to detail. With the Smackdown series being the most frequent offender, we’ll use that franchise as the basis of our comparison."

[CanuckJ]

Nothing will come close to the options available in No Mercy. The fact that their was a story mode with many different ways to end it for every single title in WWE was awesome and nothing has come close to that yet. After beating 24/7 mode in smackdown vs. raw 08 I really haven't played it since and have gone back to No Mercy because its such a great game. Yukes needs to try harder and keep taking steps forward and no steps back.

[ProfessaPackMan]

The story mode in No Mercy was IN-CRE-DI-BLE!!!!

[SuperKyle]

Does everyone forget that if you had more than 2 grapplers on screen in No Mercy, the framerate made it unplayable?

WM 2000 ran consistently great with 4 jobbers in the ring (or out). However, the feature list in NM was sensational. That said, I still play WM every few months, and haven't touched NM in years.

[DakkoN]

Quote:

no game has yet to challenge No Mercy for the best wrestling game of all time

Whattt?

Fire Pro Returns, King of Colosseum, King of Colosseum 2, All Star Pro Wrestling 2, and All Star Pro Wrestling 3 are all better than No Mercy

[ChaseB]

Quote: Originally Posted by DakkoN

Whattt? Fire Pro Returns, King of Colosseum, King of Colosseum 2, All Star Pro Wrestling 2, and All Star Pro Wrestling 3 are all better than No Mercy

I enjoy Fire Pro Returns very much. Especially its price tag.

[Shinyhubcaps]

Quote: Originally Posted by SuperKyle

Does everyone forget that if you had more than 2 grapplers on screen in No Mercy, the framerate made it unplayable? WM 2000 ran consistently great with 4 jobbers in the ring (or out). However, the feature list in NM was sensational. That said, I still play WM every few months, and haven't touched NM in years.

I literally just played No Mercy maybe 20 minutes before logging on and reading this article... the framerate is not an issue with multiple characters on the screen. (The fact that it restarted after I eliminated 33 guys in Survivor mode, however, was a problem...)

Basically, though, the reasons why No Mercy was better than all other WWF/WWE games is because of the simplicity of the controls, ease of editing and options of editing, and the all-out fun factor. I rented SVR 2008 and all I could think about when playing it was No Mercy.

[demencia_total]

I haven't watched wrestling consistently or even sporadically since around 1998, but I have always enjoyed the games. With what said, it's ridiculous how people seem to have this idea that No Mercy is the greatest wrestling game ever created. As noted before, all those titles above surpass it in performance, fun factor and some in options. Granted, they are mostly Jap only games with the exclusion of Fire Pro Returns, which is priced cheaply and puts No Mercy's options to shame. Hell, even Virtual Pro Wrestling (the Jap version of the Revenge/Wrestlemania/No Mercy) made No Mercy look bare in options.

So yeah, games HAVE been made that surpass it, the problem I think is that American wrestling game publishers and developers don't see fit to bring such complete games when they can just tag the WWE brand on a game and it will sell like hotcakes without making any sort of significant improvement to game play and features. The Smackdown series is the perfect example of this, stamping gimmicky features into what appears to be more of a fighting game with hilariously poor AI. I'm sure that many get excited when seeing digitally rendered version of prostitutes swollen with silicon hitting each other in school girl uniforms, but seriously, they ain't even trying.