Game developers draw on African stories to create new worlds

always wanted to be a superhero. As a boy he was Wuzu, “the Great One”, sketching comic-book stories from his lair in the living room. It was the 1990s and the first video games were reaching Ghana: “beat ’em ups” such as “Mortal Kombat” and “Street Fighter”, which he played on a fake Nintendo console. He recalls waiting eight months to run a demo of “Tomb Raider”, rigging up a computer with parts sent from an uncle in Australia. Today Mr Tawia creates games and comics himself at his studio, Leti Arts, in Accra, Ghana’s capital. His African characters inhabit their own world, which he compares to the Marvel universe. An assassin from Niger might face off against a witch doctor from Kenya, or the spider god Ananse against Shaka, the mighty Zulu king. His studio’s next game, “Karmzah Run”, follows an archaeologist with cerebral palsy who has superhuman powers.