Kanye West has ideas. A lot of them. Many of these are either completely ignored or enabled by the unhealthy, cynical cult of celebrity that surrounds him. In any case, apparently one such idea that surprisingly didn't get very far was a video game pitch to the former head honcho at Nintendo America. While details are scarce, we have some theories about just what that might have entailed.
In a recent discussion, former President of Nintendo America, Reggie Fils-Aime, recounted a surreal meeting years ago with Yeezus himself at Kanye's office in Calabasas, California. "He was experimenting with a piece of video game content; he wanted reactions to it," Fils-Aime explained on his podcast, Talking Games with Reggie and Harold. "He comes out and says, ‘I want to work with Nintendo.’"
Thanks, but no thanks —
After seeing what West had to offer, Fils-Aime reportedly had to delicately turn down the proposition. "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,'" Fils-Aime tried in a classic "It's not you, it's us bid." To this, Kanye allegedly answered, "‘Reggie, you’re exactly the type of partner I want because of that reason!'"
"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," said Fils-Aime, and God bless him for it.
Oh, the possibilities —
As time has shown us, however, Kanye's desired Nintendo collab never materialized from the meeting, and the world is almost certainly a better place because of it. But curious minds can't help but wonder: just what was Kanye concocting for Nintendo?
Fils-Aime mentioned the pitch session took place "many years ago," and as much as we love imagining a Mario Kart-Dashian if only for the delightful wordplay, we'd put money on West's long-gestating Only One project, which got a teaser trailer at E3 2016 followed by a whole lot of nothing. According to various sources, the game would see the player guiding Kanye's late mother, Donda West, "to the highest gates of heaven by holding her to the light," an idea we could dissect all day, but haven't we all suffered enough this year, already?
