Random: Nintendo Had To “Politely Decline” The Chance To Work With Kanye West, Says Reggie

Collaborations with musicians aren’t uncommon in the video game industry (we still shudder when we’re reminded about the likes of Kris Kross: Make My Video and the Aerosmith-heavy Revolution X) and it seems that we very nearly had a similar team-up between Nintendo and good ol’ Yeezy himself.

Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has explained that, during an E3 show a few years back, Kanye West visited Nintendo’s booth and spent some time chatting with the one and only Shigeru Miyamoto. Following this meeting of minds, West later invited Reggie for a meeting at the office of his fashion business, with his wife Kim Kardashian also in attendance – putting the former Nintendo president in a rather tight spot:

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 going on, the possibility of doing something with Kanye just wasn’t there, and so I had to find a way to politely decline this opportunity to work with him. I told him, ‘Kanye, you don’t want to work with us because we’re tough, we’re hard. All we do is push for the very best content. We would not be the type of partner you would want to work with.’ And he looks at me and says, ‘Reggie, you’re exactly the type of partner I want because of that reason!’ It’s like, ‘Oh my gosh.’

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 is aiming to raise funds for the New York Videogame Critic’s Circle nonprofit mentoring work.