As I write this, it is well and truly WrestleMania season! I have already talked about WWE 2K24 in my WWE 2K24 review and even looked at my top 5 8-bit WWF games. Well, now we are really dealing with power, more power than Hulk Hogan’s 24 inch pythons brother! The reason for that is we are dealing with 64-bits of power as we look at my top 5 Nintendo 64 wrestling games.
I played a ton of Nintendo 64 wrestling games with my friends when we were teenagers. If you were around during this era and you were a wrestling fan you know that nothing comes close to capturing the magic these games offered in multiplayer.
Now, please note that these are MY top five Nintendo 64 wrestling games, I never played any of the Japanese ones, hence why they are not on my list. If your favorite N64 wrestling games are different from mine, be sure to leave them in the comments section down below.
Number 5
WCW/NWO World Tour
Forget Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64, it was WCW/NWO World Tour that made me want a Nintendo 64! I played this at my friend’s house and we were blown away by it. To be honest, this game is pretty much irrelevant because of what came after it. It is kind of lacking in game modes and the WCW roster is not even that big. However, I had such a great time with this and if it were not for this game, I am not sure I would have been as desperate to get a Nintendo 64 as I was.
Number 4
WWF Attitude
The Acclaim wrestling games are a bit of an acquired taste and if you never played them back in the day, they probably feel horrible now. However, I loved WWF Attitude. I remember picking this up on launch day, along with the WWF Rumble Pack. I had college that day, I planned to pick the game up before class, finish my day at college then rush home to play it. The lure of the WWF was too strong and I ended up blowing off college for the day, a wise decision if you ask me. This was so much bigger and better than WWF Warzone. It has a massive roster, a deep career mode, a fantastic create a wrestler, and a PPV mode. I know the gameplay is not something that everyone loves, but I always had a really fun time with this game. However, if I am being honest, out of all the games on this list, it has aged the poorest.
Number 3
WCW/NWO Revenge
Now we are talking 1998 had some huge hitters for the Nintendo 64, Zelda, and Turok 2 spring to mind, but 1998 on the N64 for me was all about WCW/NWO Revenge. The first game felt like they took the Japanese Virtual Pro Wrestling and put a little WCW paint on this. This one here felt far more like an actual WCW game. It had a much larger roster, and more authentic arenas, and the wrestlers felt more like their on screen counterparts. A great example is Kevin Nash. He had a generic powerbomb in the previous game, but here, it feels far more like his actual powerbomb. I must have spent hundreds of hours playing this with my friends. We would have four player matches over and over again, usually playing as the four same guys. Scott Hall, Bret Hart, British Bulldog and Kevin Nash. The only downside to this game was that they never used the wrestler’s actual entrance music.
Number 2
WWF WrestleMania 2000
When THQ lost the WCW license to EA, they went after the WWF one and they got it, right behind Acclaim’s back, ending a ten year partnership. I loved the two WCW Nintendo 64 games but with the WWF. THQ and AKI really went all in. This is a much more authentic kind of experience. We still have that amazing gameplay, but it is expanded with more moves and we even now have cage matches! You can create a wrestler and a belt and defending championships was something that my friends and I took very seriously back in the day. It had actual entrances and music which may not have been the highest quality, but it was so awesome that they were there.
Number 1
WWF No Mercy
As soon as you saw the title, Top 5 Nintendo 64 Wrestling Games, you knew that WWF No Mercy was going to be number 1! This is still my favorite wrestling game of all time, the back and forth action was better than ever here. They have more moves, more match types, and a massive roster of wrestlers, I remember the first time we saw Andre the Giant show up in the Royal Rumble caused us all to freak out. The gameplay was truly perfected here, everything just felt a little more in depth and polished this time around. While the multiplayer is the best thing about WWF No Mercy, you also have a bunch of single-player content here too with each championship offering its own story to play through. The inclusion of ladder matches and backstage brawls was what made this for me and my friends. We would have so many epic ladder matches, many of them running close to an hour!
So there you have it, my top 5 N64 wrestling games, I have such great memories of all those games. To be honest, WWF Warzone and even WCW Mayhem were two games that I also liked back in the day, but they missed out on my list.
Hey, if either of those games makes your own personal list, I would love to hear about it in the comments section down below.