Shigeru Miyamoto is one of the most recognized and respected figures to many Nintendo fans and gamers all around the world. Beginning his career at Nintendo in the 1970s, Miyamoto still works with Nintendo today, serving as a Representative Director and Fellow at the company. Miyamoto has accomplished much in his lengthy career, and has done some things that fans may not have first expected, such as excitedly rush towards rapper Kanye West at E3 2015.
The story of Kanye West and Shigeru Miyamoto meeting has been told before. In 2020 former Nintendo President of America Reggie Fils-Aime spoke in an interview about how the two had met in an unexpected clash of mediums. Now, a new source is retelling the events of how the two came together, including how Kanye West pitched a prototype of his game to Miyamoto.
According to Miyamoto, Kanye West showed up at E3 2015 and walked right up to the Nintendo booth unannounced. He allegedly asked to speak directly with Miyamoto, of course with the accompaniment of a translator. Kanye proceeded to show Miyamoto the prototype for his game, in which the player took on the role of Kanye's deceased mother Donda and flew up to heaven. The game also included a soundtrack by Kanye himself, and in 2016 a short trailer was released for it. At the time, Kanye was experimenting with the idea of this game, and believed that Nintendo was the company to make it work.
While Miyamoto stated that he thought the game was "very moving" when it was being shown to him, the collaboration did not end up going ahead. In mid-2015, Nintendo had a lot of other major projects going on like the first Super Mario Maker and Splatoon games. During a further meeting between Nintendo and Kanye West, Reggie Fils-Aime was the one to break the bad news to him and his then-wife Kim Kardashian. While the game, Only One, didn't take off, Kanye found other ways to pay tribute to his mother. His most recent album is even named after her.
This exchange with Miyamoto wasn't the first time Kanye West has been involved with gaming. He has quite an extensive history with the medium. At the age of 12 Kanye West had the idea for his own video game. In 2016, Kanye announced that he would be making a new album sampling video games such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Sonic Colors, and Super Mario Galaxy.