WWF No Mercy Is Still The MVP Wrestling Game of The Hood

Before my brother left for the Air Force, we went on a quest to get the latest game, Wrestlemania 2000. It was the WWF firing shots back at WCW/NWO Revenge, and so paving the way for the wrestling genre. This was an amazing parting gift from my brother, I played it everyday after school with my best friend Phil Ogaldez. Life was good and it was fun… but that all changed the day that WWF No Mercy attacked the Nintendo 64 console. That shit dropped on a cold, dark day in November. Phil and I walked a mile from school to get our copies, literally in a November Rain, from Gamestop. On the trek back home, thunder was sounding off above us and numerous ambulances kept speeding by. Phil looked at me and said, “I bet those folks in the ambulances bought the game and couldn’t handle it!” while jumping up and down and pointing to the still-boxed game.

See, this WWF No Mercy wasn’t just another wrestling video game. Nah, homie there was a science to the mechanics of this. As Savon would say, “There’s physics to this shit.” The game changes you. It’s like Mario Kart but with wrestling. You become this visceral “other” of yourself that feasts on combat, that needs a challenge to hone your skill. The create-a-character option only pushes you further into the darkness of that void. Phil and I spent countless hours creating our characters, our Avatars if you will. This wasn’t a created character, this was us in the Matrix, in our final form. The beautiful thing about WWF No Mercy was the…