Everything We Know About The Cancelled Nintendo 64 Game
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No Mercy for the Nintendo 64 is highly regarded by many as the greatest wrestling video game ever made. Known for its silky smooth gameplay, many fans still yearn for this style of game to return to this day with No Mercy serving as the main influence on AEW’s first console game, to be released sometime in the coming year. The game also sold exceptionally well, becoming a household title for the Nintendo 64. It is often a game that is brought up when people discuss their favorite titles from that era of gaming by both wrestling fans and non-wrestling fans alike.
This game was able to transcend the wrestling game market, seeing as how fun and easy it was to simply pick up and play. Surprisingly, this would be the last WWF (now known as WWE) game made by the famous AKI team despite its incredible success. A sequel was originally planned for the next year, looking to further build upon the already incredible foundation that was WWF No Mercy. Unfortunately this game would never see the light of day. This is everything we know about the planned sequel to No Mercy.
The Sequel To No Mercy Was To Be Called Backlash
The working title for the project was known as WWF Backlash, and it was said to be releasing in the final quarter of 2001. This game would look to give the gamer an updated WWE experience, featuring a multitude of new match types that were prevalent on WWE television at the time, such as the Hell in a Cell match which had never been featured on an N64 wrestling game before, as well as TLC matches which had become all the rage in the WWE’s tag division in between the time of No Mercy’s development cycle and the expected release date of its sequel.
RELATED: Why Are The Nintendo 64 WCW & WWE Games Still Beloved By Fans?No Mercy is a game known for its insane roster, having released at a great time for WWE, as it was the first game able to include all the recently defected WCW talent who had jumped ship early in the year 2000, as well as the rookie sensation Kurt Angle, having debuted for the federation in November 1999. It featured them all next to the mainstays of the Attitude Era, perfectly encapsulating the exciting time that was 2000 in WWE, beating SmackDown 2 for the Playstation 1 to the jump by just three days.
Having said that, imagine what the roster for the sequel would have looked like with WWE’s acquisition of both WCW and ECW the next year. You would be taking that excellent base roster of No Mercy’s and adding fan favorites from other companies like Booker T, DDP, Raven, and Rob Van, Dam allowing fans to mix them in with the WWE talent, using them how they see fit, hopefully doing a better job than WWE's creative team at the time.
RELATED: 10 Things About WWE In 2001 That Make No Sense
The WWF Backlash Video Game Was Cancelled Before It Was Completed
Unfortunately, the game was set to release at the end of the N64s life cycle, with the Nintendo Gamecube releasing in September of that year. This caused the project to be scrapped about thirty percent into development, upon the wishes of publishers THQ, who wanted the AKI team to begin working on something to put on the newer platform instead of the older one that would soon become obsolete. A few months after the project was scrapped the AKI team would part ways with THQ and Yukes would take over operation on new titles, having just recently developed the incredibly successful SmackDown on the Playstation 1, which marked the beginning of the longest running WWE games franchise.
AKI would then partner with Electronic Arts, owners of the WCW video game license, and actually started work on a WCW game that was obviously cut short when the company was bought by WWE in March 2001. Luckily the AKI engine would continue to live on however thanks to Electronic Arts and a little series known as the Def Jam games. That’s right, the incredibly successful Def Jam games of the early 2000s were made using assets built for the WWE years late,r serving as yet another unique tie between the worlds of rap and wrestling. The team had done it again on the newer generation of consoles with a new coat of paint that proved to be a marketing masterpiece, providing gamers with a familiar gaming experience, once again selling tons of copies across multiple entries and becoming some of the most fondly remembered games of a generation.
