When I think of my favorite games, it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. The Ace Attorney and Pokemon series’ jump out at me for being my favorite franchises, and classics like Shenmue, Final Fantasy VI and Jet Set Radio Future are strong contenders as well. Above all else, my philosophy in judging a game is that fun is the most important factor, and my favorite game encompasses this. After more than 20 years of gaming, my favorite game of all time is WWF No Mercy, a classic from the Nintendo 64 archives. While never the prettiest or most technically sound game even at release, none of that mattered when my group of friends got together and would lay the smackdown on each other.

Even today, wrestling game fans hold No Mercy in high regard and it’s easy to see why. The game had a very simple control scheme, with a focus on both a rock-paper-scissors style reversal system and a high risk high reward offense. Each of the over 40 wrestlers featured had varying move sets which revolved mostly around two actions; strikes and grapples. Holding different directions while attacking performed different moves, and holding the attack buttons performed stronger attacks, but were much easier to reverse. A momentum bar displayed for each character on screen showed how likely they were to fight off an opponent, and taunting after a full bar allows the player to perform their finishing move for a certain amount of time. A skillful player can counter attacks before they hit with well timed taps of the shoulder buttons that could hold off strikes or grapple setups. It all sounds basic for today’s day and age, but No Mercy had something that most games today still lack; attention to detail.

In my opinion, no game can be considered great without a strong single player component. Most wrestling and fighting games cater to multiplayer nearly exclusively, but No Mercy knew better. One of my standout memories was running through the story mode, fighting for each belt so I could eventually defend it against my friends. I must have run through each the stories dozens of times, mostly because the game gave a great reason to do so. Instead of forcing you to retry or exit if a match is lost, the story continues and adjusts accordingly. In order to see everything the game had to offer, players had to lose matches and experience the fallout. I personally haven’t seen this feature implemented in a fighting or wrestling game this well again until last year’s BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, and even then, wasn’t featured in every fight. The stories would unfold like an episode of one of the wrestling programs, with plenty of surprises in store. For example, when I first had to defend my newly won WWE title against Andre the Giant in the game’s final challenge, it was a genuinely intimidating thought to go toe to toe with the legend. The stories were a blast, but they were just a precursor to what the game was truly capable of.

The standout feature of the Nintendo 64 was arguably its built in 4 player support, and No Mercy took full advantage. Every day, my friends and I would get together for a few hours and square off for one of the belts. We each created our own cliques and stables of wrestlers that fought for each title, and would go down the list until all of them were defended, and at times even created our own pay-per-views at the newly opened Staples Center, (in game of course.) We would even recreate a real match and alter the outcome when we felt the wrong man had won. No Mercy added many gimmick matches that weren’t in an N64 wrestling game up to this point, but the match of choice was usually the triple threat ladder match. Some of these matches would go on for over a half hour, with each character being a beaten, broken mess after taking so many finishing moves or falls off the ladder, and there was nothing like it. Each match felt like a struggle, desperately tapping away at the controller to grab the belt at the top of the climb. Alliances would be made during the match to gang up on one person, only for it to dissolve within minutes, and fights became such a brutal mess that it made them that much more enjoyable.

Going back to the attention to detail in the game, one of the biggest innovations it made was something that seems like common sense. If a character was able to perform a finishing move that wasn’t a grapple, the opponent would be prone during the animation, giving high flyers a chance to win. That means opponents would lay down for Chris Benoit’s headbutt, Jeff Hardy’s Swanton Bomb, Eddie Guerrero’s Frog Splash, the entire People’s Elbow and even Scotty 2 Hotty’s finisher, The Worm as long as that character had their special move at the time. Matches without submissions turned on wouldn’t make those moves useless either, since characters could be rendered unconscious and ripe for the pinning. Each one of the characters could beat any other one in the right hands, which made it an incredibly balanced game for the most part. Each one of our favorite wrestlers were well represented, and if they weren’t we’d use the in depth wrestler editor or create-a-wrestler feature to make just about anyone we could think of. It’s no surprise that we continued to play the game every day for about a year and a half. Successfully keeping the Intercontinental Title on Chris Benoit for a full year has to be one of my most memorable gaming, and each defense was some of the most fun I’ve ever had with a video game.

This trip down memory lane reinforces the fact of what’s important in a game to me. By today’s standards, the gameplay is slow for most, the animations are clunky, the graphics are hideous and the presentation is archaic. However, give me the choice between No Mercy and the newest Smackdown game, or even Street Fighter 4, Modern Warfare 2 or Metroid Prime and I would still choose the 10 year old wrestling game. The game was simply fun in every aspect. It was fun alone, especially fun with a group of friends and a blast to create your own characters, (which is a huge accomplishment since I never have the patience for creating my own content.) Its faults have become more apparent with time, but as long as you’re having fun, who cares? I didn’t, my friends didn’t and many gamers today still don’t. No Mercy’s features managed to overshadow every potential negative, and is fondly remembered as my favorite game of all time.