Ladders have played a surprisingly pivotal role in all sorts of different video games, from AAA shooters and action-adventure titles to visual novels and cosy life sims.
In our Ladders in Video Games series, we spotlight some of our favourite video game ladders – and today we're looking back at one of the greatest wrestling games of all time, namely WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64.
WWF No Mercy was released in the year 2000: the height of the so-called 'Attitude Era', when big names like The Rock, Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin were taking the world by storm and making professional wrestling more popular than it had ever been before.
In No Mercy, you took control of the era's biggest stars and made them rough each other up in a variety of different game modes. When you got bored of vanilla one-on-one exhibition matches, you could team up for a tag match, attempt a two-against-one handicap match, or do your best to survive the gruelling battle royale that is the Royal Rumble.
And then there was the ladder match. The WWF (or WWE as it's known today) had been putting on ladder matches since the early '90s, but WWF No Mercy for the Nintendo 64 was one of the first video games to feature this type of fight.
It could get pretty brutal.
What's a ladder match?
A ladder match is a type of wrestling match that is won by climbing up a step ladder and retrieving an item (typically a championship belt) that's hanging above the ring.
Of course, your opponent is trying to achieve the same goal—and if you try to go up the ladder without incapacitating him first, he will pull you off the ladder or even topple it over to keep you from clinching victory.
So if you want to win a ladder match in WWF No Mercy, the first step is to beat the other guy senseless so that you can climb the ladder in peace.
And the quickest way to do that...is with the ladder itself.
How to win a ladder match in WWF No Mercy
You can do lots and lots of different moves in WWF No Mercy. Each wrestler has his (or her) own unique moveset consisting of more than a hundred different manoeuvres.
For example, try pressing A and then B while standing in front of your opponent, then do it again while standing behind them, then do it again but instead of pressing B, press A again. Each of these inputs will make your wrestler do something different.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg: you've also got weak grapples, strong grapples, weak strikes, strong strikes, running attacks, ground attacks, flying attacks, counter attacks, and of course, those super-special finishing moves you've seen on TV.
But very often, the most effective tactic is simply to pick up the biggest object you can find and hit the other guy with it over and over again until he stops getting up. There are lots of different weapons in WWF No Mercy, ranging from the classic (a folding steel chair, a baseball bat) to the bizarre (an enormous wedge of cheese). But the biggest weapon of all is the one that's right there in the middle of the ring: the step ladder.
So grab that ladder and make your opponent regret their failure to grab it first. Hit them with the ladder until their attitude meter says DANGER—or better still, LOSING IT. Those words are your cue to stand the ladder in the centre of the ring, climb up it, and mash that A button like crazy until your character is holding the title belt.
Oh, and don't try this at home.
