When one thinks of the best professional wrestling video games ever made, one game that often comes to mind is the Nintendo 64 classic WWF No Mercy. Fans have been wanting to see a new version of WWF No Mercy for decades, but as pro wrestling games have become more realistic, they have abandoned that arcade style of gameplay almost completely. However, it seems that there may be hope yet, as All Elite Wrestling's Cody Rhodes has teased that the upcoming AEW video game could very well take inspiration from No Mercy.
In an interview with Wrestling With Mazique, Cody was asked if WWF No Mercy developers Syn Sophia (known as AKI when it developed No Mercy) was working on the AEW video game. Cody didn't offer a confirmation, but he also didn't outright deny it. "I can't say much," he said in the interview, "but what I will say is that it is the game people have been asking for. It's the game we've been hinting at."
Earlier this summer, TNT shared an image of a mock Nintendo 64 case featuring The Elite and Chris Jericho, clearly done as a reference to classic N64 wrestling games like WWF No Mercy. It seems likely that image is partly what Cody is referring to when he says that it's the game that AEW has been "hinting at."
If the AEW video game is truly going to take inspiration from WWF No Mercy, a lot of questions still remain. The biggest question is what the graphics will be like. An AEW video game with Nintendo 64-style graphics would undoubtedly appeal to nostalgic fans, but may be a turn off to a larger audience. Then again, an AEW video game with older graphics would theoretically be developed quicker, allowing AEW to put out a video game as fast as possible and struck while the iron is still hot.
We've heard talk of an AEW video game from Nick Jackson and now Cody, so one has to imagine more details will come sooner rather than later. Fans hoping for an AEW video game should stay tuned to AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights, as that seems like the most likely place where an AEW video game announcement would happen.