Former Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aime revealed that he had to „turn down“ an offer to work with Kanye West on a video game concept due to the number of other projects currently in development at the company. by Nintendo Everything, Reggie shared the story on his site Talking games with the Reggie and Harold podcast, It is fundraising for Nonprofit mentoring work for the New York Video Game Critics Circle, It is reported that the meeting took place at E3 „many years ago“.

Kanye visited the Nintendo Booth during E3 and was even able to spend time with Shigeru Miyamoto. He then requested a meeting with Reggie, and ended up meeting in one of Kanye’s offices in Calabasas, California.

Reggie explained, „Part of him was talking about what he had to do. He was trying out part of the video game content; he wanted feedback on that. He comes out and says, ‚I want to work with Nintendo.“

“We had a lot of different projects on Nintendo, and the potential to do something with Kanye just wasn’t there, and so I had to find a way to politely dismiss this opportunity to work with him. I said to him,” Kanye, you don’t want to work with us because we’re strong, we’re tough. All we do is press for the best content. We wouldn’t be the type of partner you want to work with. And he looked at me and said, „Reggie, you are exactly the type of partner I want because of this reason!“ It’s like, „Oh my God.“

Not only was the meeting „interesting“, Reggie said, there was also Kim Kardashian West. While the project never saw the light of day, both Reggie and Nintendo felt that „Kanye has such a passion for the video game space, and he’s innovative.“

Kanye’s history with games extends beyond this meeting, as he revealed that he was working on a game called Only One that would have players guide his mother Donda „to the highest gates of heaven by carrying her into the light.“ While the project was announced in 2015, little news has emerged since then.

Image Credit: Rob Kim / Getty Images.

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Adam Pankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter Embed a Tweet and on Twitch.