“If someone makes a crack about ‘dumb video gamers,’ wave this astounding first issue in their face!” wrote the veteran game journalist Arnie Katz of Chris’ fanzine Video Zone, which he created in 1993 when he was 13 years old. “This is definitely a fanzine to watch. This appealing newcomer is worth a try.”
Today, Chris Kohler is himself a veteran writer, editor, video presenter, and live speaker with a passion for video game history and a career spanning 25 years—and counting.
Three years after that fanzine review ran in Electronic Games magazine, Chris was writing professionally, with features and reviews in national publications such as Game On! USA, J-pop.com, Animerica, and even Arnie Katz’s site Inside Games.
In 2002, upon graduating summa cum laude from Tufts University with a degree in Japanese language and culture, Chris recieved a Fulbright scholarship to write his first book, Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life. Originally published in 2004 by BradyGames, it was later republished in a new, definitive edition by Dover Publications in October 2016.
By the mid-2000s, Chris’ writing could be found in publications such as Official PlayStation Magazine, Nintendo Official Magazine UK, Electronic Gaming Monthly, IGN, and many others.
In 2005, he founded Game|Life, the first gaming vertical of WIRED, and served as its editor from then until January 2017. In 2008, Game|Life was a Webby award nominee. At WIRED, Chris created and hosted one of the company’s first video series, a weekly look at the world of video games.
From 2017 to 2020, he was Features Editor at Kotaku, where he created and hosted the video series Complete In Box.
His most recent book is Final Fantasy V, published in 2017 by Boss Fight Books. Other books include Retro Gaming Hacks (O’Reilly) and the Good Job, Brain! book of pub trivia, puzzles, and quizzes, based on the two-time Stitcher Award-winning podcast that Chris co-hosts, Good Job, Brain!
Chris has been a fixture on the long-running Retronauts podcast ever since its inception in 2006. He has moderated and appeared on panels at events like DICE, Penny Arcade Expo, Game Developers Conference, and many more. Among other appearances in documentary films and television, you can see Chris discuss the history of Nintendo in the 2021 series Playing With Power.
In 2020, after 24 years in journalism, Chris embarked on a new challenge, creating the role of Editorial Director at the celebrated game studio Digital Eclipse. As the studio’s in-house editor/writer/historian, he brings his deep knowledge of game history and journalistic rigor to spearhead the acclaimed historical sections of Digital Eclipse’s classic gaming collections.
Chris’s earlier projects included Blizzard Arcade Collection, Disney Classic Games Collection, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection. More recently, he has worked alongside the team at Digital Eclipse to craft a new approach to historic game releases, the “interactive documentary.” This includes the recent releases Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, The Making of Karateka, and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story.
You can email Chris at wiredkohler@gmail.com.