Well, in the midst of all the political and pop-culture related discussions here on Helheim, here's something completely out in left field: Which of the two big competing 16-bit systems did you own?
I owned a Super NES. However, a couple years ago, I began playing Genesis games on the Wii VC and XBLA. I will definitely say that the SNES was the better system overall (better games, better graphics, better sound). But the Genesis nonetheless had some fine entries. Sonic The Hedgehog 1, Vectorman, ComixZone, and Phantasy Star IV to name a few.
Of course, in video game circles, it became somewhat trendy to bash the Genesis during the late-90's. I even remember, at the time, frequenting a video game message board where somebody openly admitted to preferring the Genesis over the SNES, only to be met with tons of flaming and criticism from some of the other posters (to be fair, though, most of the people on that MB were IMO douchebags). Nonetheless, let's give credit where credit's due: It was the first game console to give Nintendo some real competition, it helped bring video games to a more mature audience (the Playstation would later solidify this), and say what you want about the ethics and sportsmanship of Sega's aggressive marketing campaign, but there's one thing you can't deny:
It worked! The Genesis, for at least a few years, was the "cool" system, while the SNES was perceived by mainstream as a "toy." And while Sega's ads may seem kind of lame in retrospect, they were actually quite devestating if you were an 11 year old SNES owner in the early-90's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7nsBoqJ ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlulSyBI2aY
And, as an added bonus, here are a couple mid-90's Game Gear commercials:
http://redirectingat.com/?id=593X1004&u ... o8xM6Zi5Zs (a commercial that was actually banned from television due to its Southern stereotyping).
http://redirectingat.com/?id=593X1004&u ... P04XzC-GkA (this one was actually pretty funny)
So which of these systems did you own (if any)?