Classically trained, Sugiyama was considered a major inspiration for other Japanese game music composers and was active from the 1960s until his death from septic shock in 2021.

Prior to his death, the Japanese government honored him with Order of the Rising Sun and named him a Person of Cultural Merit.

In a little known foray for Matsushita Electric, Sugiyama composed, arranged & conducted a track called Disco Check, for the fourth volume of Technics '80 Audio Inspection records,[4] performed with 24 instruments by the Nova Studio Group.

With these records not being for sale, this astonishing & innovative piece has probably rarely been heard outside the Technics dealers they were intended for, though copies do sometimes turn up second hand online.

[7] In 1986, the CD, Dragon Quest Suite, was released, utilizing the Tokyo Strings Ensemble to interpret Sugiyama's melodies.

[11] The performances included music from over eighteen different video game composers, such as Koji Kondo, Yoko Kanno, Nobuo Uematsu, Keiichi Suzuki, as well as Sugiyama himself.

In 2005, Sugiyama was holding a series of concerts in Japan with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra with music from Dragon Quest VIII, as well as his classic compositions from the past.

[18] Earlier on in his career, Sugiyama said that his process for making music for games was based on seeing initial drafts on its setting and story.

[19] Sugiyama's non-work related hobbies included photography, traveling, building model ships, collecting old cameras, and reading.

[25] A television drama played by actor Ken Yasuda detailing Sugiyama's involvement with Dragon Quest aired on Nippon TV on August 27, 2022.

He was one of the signatories on "The Facts", a full-page ad published by The Washington Post on June 14, 2007, that was written by a number of Japanese politicians and academics in response to the passing of United States House of Representatives House Resolution 121, which sought an official apology from the Government of Japan regarding their involvement of using comfort women, sexual slaves used by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

He further thought that the demands of the Japanese anti-nuclear movement to immediately dismantle all nuclear energy facilities without offering any alternative solutions would affect the country's ability to defend itself.

Sugiyama added that the lack of children born from LGBT couples was an important topic to discuss, also suggesting that Japan was more empowering to women than South Korea.