Bernard Stolar (October 9, 1946 – June 22, 2022) was an American businessman and a prominent figure in the video game industry for many years. Among several roles in the industry, he was a founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America, essential to the launch of the original PlayStation, and president of Sega of America, where he helped lead the development of the Sega Dreamcast home console. Early life and education Stolar graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. Career Stolar started by co-founding Pacific Novelty Manufacturing Inc., a coin-op machine company in 1980, before he was hired by Atari into their own arcade game business. Later, Stolar was moved into Atari's home console division, where he led development of the Atari Lynx handheld console in the early 1990s. Stolar was the first executive vice president and founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America, where he was integral in both the launch and building of the original PlayStation's game catalog. At Sony, Stolar signed many game franchises including Crash Bandicoot, Ridge Racer, Oddworld, Spyro and Battle Arena Toshinden. After leaving Sony, he accepted an offer to become president and chief operating officer at Sega of America, where he led the development and launch of the Dreamcast. One of Stolar's top moves was to acquire Visual Concepts for Sega of America and create 2K Sports. In December 1999, Stolar joined Mattel as president and helped spawn a multi-million unit selling Barbie video game series. In late 2005, Stolar became an advisor and director at Adscape Media. Stolar would later sell Adscape Media to Google for $23 million USD. Afterwards, Google would hire Stolar as their Games Evangelist. In 2009, Stolar became the chief executive officer of GetFugu. By 2010, Stolar had resigned. In 2008, young entrepreneur Jordan Freeman cold called Bernie Stolar, and they began working together to bring classic games to Steam (service) and other platforms. In 2014, they decided to launch their own storefront as well, so Stolar became the chairman of ZOOM Platform and the Jordan Freeman Group. Death Stolar died on June 22, 2022 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 75. Several of his friends and colleagues paid tribute to him in a Forbes memorial including Ken Kutaragi who said "Bernie was the man who devoted his life and passion to the video