The Japanese company’s consoles would never have been created without him, and he was also the head of SEGA.

Hideki Sato, the designer of SEGA consoles, has passed away. The 77-year-old engineer and former president of SEGA died at the age of 77.

According to SegaRetro.org, Sato’s earliest projects were the arcade games Monaco GP, Turbo, and Star Jacker, and his career at SEGA began in the 1970s. His most significant contribution, however, was leading the engineering team behind every SEGA home console from 1983 until the company’s withdrawal from the hardware business in 2001. This included the SG-1000 (1983), the Master System (1985), the Mega Drive/Genesis (1989), the Saturn (1994), and the Dreamcast (1999).

Following Isao Okawa’s death in 2001, Sato became president of SEGA, overseeing the publisher’s difficult transition away from hardware manufacturing, the field that had defined his career. He resigned in 2003, shortly before SEGA’s lifesaving merger with pachinko manufacturer Sammy. He finally left SEGA entirely in 2008.

His work is historically significant because these were among the first consoles to compete with Nintendo after the video game industry’s 1983 crash, though the success of the PlayStation and PS2 (direct competitors of the Saturn and Dreamcast) ultimately contributed to the end of SEGA’s own console business.

The Dreamcast, Sato’s final project, was a commercial failure. Today, however, it is fondly remembered as a machine far ahead of its time, with a library packed with cult classics, experimental features (such as the VMU, which doubled as a memory card and a second display), and pioneering online functionality. On Dreamcast, Phantasy Star Online became the first successful console MMO, and fans still experiment with SEGA’s browser and other online features to this day.

Thanks to Sato’s leadership – and the work of others in the post-Dreamcast era – SEGA successfully transitioned out of console manufacturing. The company survived the crisis and now operates as an influential third-party publisher, with popular series such as Yakuza/Like a Dragon and the evergreen Sonic the Hedgehog in its portfolio.

Source: PCGamer, SEGARetro, Note.com