If you want to appreciate his work today, consider reading these lovely articles about the systems he helped design:

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/master-system/

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/mega-drive-genesis...

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/dreamcast/

What a legend. The Dreamcast in particular was a work of art too ahead of its time to be fully appreciated. It was the first console with support for broadband, way back in 2000. For context, AOL dialup peaked around this time. Spec-wise, it traded blows with the PS2 (better GPU, slower CPU) despite releasing around 18 months earlier.

The VMUs that plugged into the controllers were another highlight capturing the zeitgeist at the time, where everyone was into Tamagotchis and other little LCD toys. Everything about that console was a joy, shame it didn't do better in the market.

Correction: Hideki Sato didn't directly design all Sega's consoles, but rather oversaw their development as head of the R&D department. He was only directly involved in designing the earlier consoles.

The Saturn hardware, for example, was designed by Kazuhiko Hamada and a team of about a dozen engineers who had previously made the System 32 arcade hardware.

In addition to his work leading Sega's R&D efforts, Sato should also be remembered as one of the primary reasons why Sega began investing more into arcade video game development in the 1970s.

RIP. I loved PSO on the Dreamcast, sank alot of hours into that game back then... Anyone here remembers that? And the Tamagotchi-esque memory cards (VMU) were cool.

Wonder if they can get any more ads on that webpage

Ugh sometimes I wish for an alternative universe in which Dreamcast had won over the other consoles of the day.

It was just awkwardly released, too soon after PS1 and N64. On one hand it was massively impressive for the time, on the other, most people's desire to buy another console was probably at a low and then PS2 and Xbox stole the show.

It probably also didn't help that Sega Genesis was a fiasco with all the weird add-ons.