Feature of the Week: “I Was Their ‘Man In Japan’, But In Reality, I Was A Teenager In Putney”
Shintaro Kanaoya has had one of the most remarkable careers you could possibly hope for.
Born in Japan in the 1970s, he and his family relocated to the United Kingdom when he was still a baby, yet connections back home set him up as the perfect ‘Far East’ correspondent for a series of video game magazines, including The Games Machine (established by Oli Frey and Roger Kean of Zzap!64 fame), Raze and Sega Pro.
Remarkably, by the time he began studying for his A-Levels, Kanaoya was already a published writer and a font of knowledge on everything happening in Japan – but he left the games media industry to finish his schooling and go off to university, only to return to the industry in the mid-’90s at Peter Molyneux’s Bullfrog studio.
This role would see him progress to senior positions within EA, Sony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft and Rare, before finally striking out on his own with Chorus Worldwide, the company he established in 2012.
Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media’s sites from an editorial perspective. He’s also the editor of Time Extension, the network’s newest site, which – paradoxically – is all about gaming’s past glories.