Me and WWE

13 years later, Hart stood across the ring from Michaels for the first time since that Survivor Series. Microphones in hand, they talked it out. A similar in-ring meeting between Hart and McMahon on the same show was kayfabe (they had been on speaking terms for several years), but this exchange was reputedly genuine.

They hated each other for years, and so they spoke about it in the ring – unscripted, but with their game faces on. As older, cooler-headed men, they gingerly embraced and laid their differences to rest.

In the ring in Canada, we saw live, unspun reality in a business that depends upon the opposite. Even so, if you talk to long-term wrestling observers and pundits outside the organisation, you will probably still find some who believe The Montreal Screwjob was actually the greatest act of kayfabe in the history of the business. The principals certainly had it in them.

The reason I'm walking into a room with Paul Wight today, however, is the game this article is supposed to be about: WWE All Stars. It's a fast, twitch-orientated beat-'em-up starring caricatured wrestlers past and present. The animation and interaction between wrestlers is convincing, polished to the sort of sheen you would expect in a post-Street Fighter IV world. The controls are accessible but deep, with all manner of counters, reversals, combos and exaggerated finishers.

It's fun to play and should entertain hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of fans. But I won't play it when it comes out, because I need the storytelling and I need kayfabe, and it offers neither. The more simulation-orientated WWE SmackDown vs. RAW series wrestles with storytelling, but obviously not kayfabe.

For the benefit of fans wondering whether the two games will complement one another: I think so. It's awesome to pit John Cena against The Rock in All Stars, especially when a Five-Knuckle Shuffle involves Cena leaping 30 feet into the air post-windmill. Paul Wight has his own dream bout though, because when he grew up he idolised a particular wrestler over all others.

André Roussimoff was the other acromegaly sufferer you've heard of: he was André the Giant, an extraordinary presence during his amazing career as the WWF's most iconic Big Man. The World's Largest Athlete would have loved to work with – they never say fight, it's always work – The Eighth Wonder of The World, and WWE All Stars allows Wight to dream a bit more vividly.

I get five minutes with Wight, but I could talk to him for five hours. Probably days. I begin by saying that I really wish he and Chris Jericho (my other favourite) were still a tag team, because the period when they were Unified Tag Team Champions, allowing them to appear on both house shows (RAW and SmackDown are otherwise segregated for various reasons), was one of my favourites.