Hideki Sato, the creator of the Mega Drive and other Sega consoles, passed away
Video games are a relatively new form of entertainment, having existed for less than 50 years. But their pioneers are aging and, sadly, passing away. Hideki Sato, the designer of most Sega consoles, died on February 13th at the age of 77.
Hideki Sato will forever be remembered as the designer of the Sega Mega Drive (known as the Sega Genesis in the United States), the company's most successful console. In the 1990s, it fiercely competed with the Super Nintendo, even surpassing it in some countries.
Sato was also the designer of other devices for the company, such as the Sega Saturn, Game Gear, and Dreamcast. He served as president of Sega and remained with the company for 33 years.
This Japanese engineer began working at Sega in 1971, just one year before video games began to go mainstream with the Pong game machine in 1972.
Sega quickly recognized the potential of video games, and Hideki Sato, a hardware engineer, began working on developing home consoles. He contributed to the development of Sega's first home console, the SG-1000 (1983), but his most significant work remains the Mega Drive (1988), which, thanks to Sonic games and Sega's conversions to arcade games, became a strong competitor to the Super Nintendo.
Sato and his team also designed the Game Gear handheld and the Sega Saturn, the company's first home console with 3D graphics. His final project was the Dreamcast in 1998, a device ahead of its time: the first console in history to offer online multiplayer as a core feature.
Unfortunately, the latest gaming consoles did not achieve the sales that Sega hoped for, so the long-established company abandoned manufacturing the consoles and focused its efforts entirely on game development.
Hideki Sato remained with the company as an executive director, then became its president in 2002 and 2003. After that, he held a consultancy position until he left the company in 2008.
He spent his later years as a professor at Tokyo University of Science, where he taught engineering and the history of video game consoles.
On February 13th, Hideki Sato passed away at the age of 77. He will be remembered by millions of gamers as the creator of the Mega Drive, one of the most beloved gaming devices in history, which shaped an entire generation.