Kanye West may wear many hats as a rapper, fashion designer and business mogul, but his busy schedule still allows for the occasional marathon video game session.
In a rare post on his Instagram Stories on Wednesday (January 1), Ye — who just recently returned to social media — shared a short video of himself playing the popular action-adventure game The Last of Us Part II, which appears to be his all-time favorite.
In his caption, the 47-year-old rapper revealed that he had dedicated several hours to the game, writing: “Last of Us 2 on survivor+ mode got me spending all day on one board. By faaaaaaarrrr the best game ever made so far. This is not a sponsored post.”
Ye has had a keen interest in video games since his youth and once petitioned Nintendo make a game with him.
According to gaming journalist Zachary Ryan, Kanye approached Nintendo boss Shigeru Miyamoto in 2015 and pitched him a game where players took control of his late mother Donda West as she flew to heaven.
The G.O.O.D. Music founder announced the game, Only One, two weeks later during a Yeezy fashion event in New York before a trailer was revealed at E3 in 2016.
The game has yet to be released and there has been no update on its status since 2016.
It was later revealed that Nintendo turned down the chance to work with the rap legend on a project.
During a 2020 episode of the Talking Games With Reggie and Harold podcast, former president and COO of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aimé, explained why it just wasn’t the right time for a Kanye collaboration.
“Part of it was talking about what he was up to,” he said. “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,’” Fils-Aimé continued.
“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.’”
