No Mercy was a huge hit when it came out in 2000. The graphics are pretty sharp for the time, and the gameplay is good - easy to control, but hard to master, as there are moves like block, or reverse which may take a bit of time to master. You can play the game for hours and hours since there are so many things to complete on it. The wrestlers' faces are briliantly made, with each looking like the real guy! There arms are a bit blocky though...

There are a huge amount of moves that you can use to punish your victims. These are all easy to pick up, as main moves are used with A, B and the D-pad. The D-pad will determine what move you do by inputting a certain sequence of directions. You can also do a strong grapple or weaker grapple. There are moves for all different situations, whether your opponent is standing, on the floor (face up and down), on the turnbuckle, or even sitting up. As I said, the moves are easy to carry out. If you do enough damage, your attitude bar will get bigger, and you can get it up more by using the joystick to 'taunt'. You can then do your special move once the bar says SPECIAL, by grappling and using the joystick.

Another great feature is the weapons! Ranging from a steel chair, to a microphone, from a fire extinguisher to a 4x2...even from a massive cheese slice to a trash can! There are more of these, which will cause your opponent to bleed (important in those nasty 'First Blood' matches!

You can customise the rules for exhibition matches. The time, if rope break is on or not, if a count out is on or off, even interferences from the computer! There is also first blood match, or a ladder match, or even a cage match.

You can fight in about 8 different arenas, not to mention all the other rooms back stage that you can fling people into. These include a coridoor, a pool room, a changing room, and a boiler room. When fighting, you can use different button combinations to do different moves. Sometimes you can even do double moves with a partner on another guy!

Another mode of the game is survival. This is where you start in the ring with 3 other competitors. The aim is to punch/throw people out, or pin them, and therefore eliminating them. There over 90 people that come in the ring, and if you win, it will take about an hour! This requires focus and determination! If you personally get a new character out, then you will win them, and be able to play with them in future games. I recommend Shane for this, he has a great punch!

The other game mode is Championship, where you go through a career like pathway, where you can make decisions and reason with other wrestlers using money earned from fights. You can buy yourself protection, and fight other people in fair and unfair matches.

The create a wrestler feature is brilliant, where you have hundreds of options of attire and moves, to make your perfect wrestler. You can also choose their theme music and their attributes. This does take a long, long time if you do it properly though.

Also, when you get money for fights, you can spend it in the 'Smackdown Mall'. This is a great feature, as you can buy moves, attire, weapons and even people!

A massive downside to the game was the memory reliability - or the lack of it. I would spend ages winning things, and making great wrestlers, and then one day, I would turn on the N64, and everything would be wiped off forever. This got too frustrating, so I stopped playing it.

I would say that the game is a better single player game, as you can do more on it, but mulitplayer should not be over looked.

Overall, this is the best wrestling game I've ever played. With so much to do on it, you can play for hours and hours, but the memory thing is an issue.