Hate to say it but a lot of people here talking about stuff they probably were too young to experience or weren't even flat out born for yet.
The NES is the correct answer, but the amount of people that really think SONY started marketing towards teenagers/older players and no one thought of doign that before them ... hahahahaha, are you fucking kidding me? Hello? Saaaaay ittttt. Saaaaaaay ittt? SEGA!
Sega was doing all that way before Sony ever showed up.
Sega had the first blockbuster violent/blood rated killer app (Mortal Kombat). Beyond that they had other games like Night Trap. Madden NFL, FIFA, and NBA Live and other sports games were popularized on the Genesis first. Sega was marketed around the clock on MTV and during prime time TV shows like Fresh Prince.
NSFW:
Sega did Virtua Fighter before Tekken, they did Virtua Racing before Ridge Racer. Sony didn't do anything new, all they did was take Nintendo's third parties (Squaresoft, Enix, Konami, Capcom, etc.) and combine that with edgier marketing/branding similar to what Sega had been doing for years.
