On February 13th, 2025, the main designer of every Sega home console, Hideki Sato, passed away at the age of 77. News of his passing was first reported over that weekend by Japanese gaming news outlet Beep21, then later by a few English language news outlets like Kotaku.
Sato-san was the main man behind the overall design of all of Sega’s home consoles. The SG-1000, Mark-III/Master System, Genesis/Mega-Drive, Saturn, and Dreamcast were all designed by him and would, undoubtedly, be very different forms of tech without his influence. He fully took charge of Sega’s R&D department as part of that job during the Genesis years. Before all that, however, he had worked on arcade hardware at Sega right after joining the company in 1971 straight out of Tokyo Metropolitan Technical College. He would also serve as the company’s president from 2001 to 2003, as Sega was making their rough transition from a console hardware company to just a game development and publishing company, where his penchant for leadership was especially crucial.
While he may not be the only man responsible for these consoles being the way they were, he was still a highly important figure in their construction. His intuitive thinking drove Sega’s hardware team to push boundaries and construct beautiful designs that stood the test of time. That forward thinking became part & parcel of the kind of philosophy that drove Sega and won them so many lifelong fans throughout the decades. No matter what your favorite Sega console is, you can thank Sato-san for just about anything you love best about it.
If you’d like to hear more about this legendary designer, you can read more after the break. For now though, on behalf of Segabits and Sega fans all over the world, I will give personal thanks to Hideki Sato for his services to gaming. I can only hope his final hours were peaceful and that he may rest in peace now. Much condolences go out to his surviving friends and family as well.
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