Collaborations with musicians are not uncommon in the video game industry (we still shudder when we are reminded of Kris Kross: Make My Video and the Aerosmith-heavy Revolution X) and it seems we almost had a similar team between Nintendo and good old Yeezy herself.
Reggie Fils-Aime, the former president of Nintendo of America, has explained that Kanye West visited Nintendo’s booth at an E3 show a few years ago and spent some time chatting with the one and only Shigeru Miyamoto. Following this meeting, West later invited Reggie to a meeting at his fashion company’s office, with wife Kim Kardashian also in attendance – which put the former Nintendo president in a difficult position:
Part of it was talking about what he was up to. He was experimenting with a piece of video game content; he wanted reactions to it. He comes out and says, “I want to work with Nintendo.” We had so many different projects at Nintendo, the opportunity to do anything with Kanye just wasn’t there, so I had to find a way to politely decline this opportunity to work with him. I said to him, ‘Kanye, you don’t want to work with us because we’re tough, we’re tough. All we do is strive for the very best content. We wouldn’t be the type of partner you’d like to work with. And he looks at me and says, ‘Reggie, you’re just the type of partner I want for that reason!’ It’s like, ‘Oh my god.’
Kanye has such a passion for the video game space and he’s a creator.
You can hear the full discussion on the Talking Games With Reggie & Harold Podcast, which aims to raise money for the New York Videogame Critic’s Circle non-profit mentoring work.