The SEGA Megadrive/Genesis is a fourth generation home console.

1st is Magnavox Odyssey, Pong consols, Colour TV games and so on.
2nd is Atari 2600, Intellivision and so on.
3rd is NES, Master System and so on.
4th is SEGA Genesis, SNES, PC Engine and so on.

I have heard of people combining the first two gens but that would cover a very wide mark of 1972 to 1983.

It's common to be confused by the Master System (Also known as the SEGA Mark 3 in Japan) as it was the third iteration of SEGAs SG-1000 8-bit consoles but the first to be sold overseas, therefore it was given a new name.
Also the SEGA Mark 3 was originally released in 1985 in Japan.

It's gen 4 baby! This is an easy one. 🍆

 Not so easy it didn't have to edit it though.

🍆

Sega does what Nintendon’t referring to the Nintendo AKA the NES?

That’s as stupid an argument as can be, since the Nintendo was called the Famicom in Japan, and that Sega tagline is an American one, made long after the Japan release of the Mega Drive.

The Mega Drive/Genesis is a gen 4 console, and I really don’t know how this can be seriously put into question.

Please excuse my ignorance but I was under the impression that the Snes is a 4th gen console and as such ive always considered the Genesis as a 4th gen console since it shared most of its active years in the market with each other. In fact they released with just 1 year of difference.

That is also the criteria I thought was used to separate generations: the years they are active in the market. As opposed to specs/tech. Because what then the n64 and psx shouldnt be in the same gen right? And they are as far as I understand.
Ive been noted in this very forum that the Switch/Ps4/Xone are the same gen but my understanding is that Swith/Scarlett/PS5 are their own gen, so this whole conversation is a bit blurry for me.
Sorry for my bad english

How is this even a question? It's a 4th generation console that competed directly with SNES and TurboGrafx-16.

Aside from the NES already being a 3rd gen console (SNES/Genesis are 4th gen), this commercial clearly isn't using third generation in regard to console generations, it's talking about the "third generation of the hot arcade hit Shinobi".

Sega's intention was probably never to fit into one generation or another, they simply wanted to surpass the current market leader. Although we now have a very clear idea of console generations, it probably wasn't such a defined concept in the late 80s, so it wouldn't do them much good to throw around generation numbers in an ad. Sega had been refining their previous hardware over successive iterations (SG1000, SG1000 II, Mark III etc) The Genesis/Mega Drive was a new concept, based around the System 16 arcade board so I think it's fair to say that Sega saw it as a completely new system. Though it began development under the name Mark V, Sega wanted completely new branding to stand out from their current batch of consoles and computers. Plus, even if the NA launches of Master System and Genesis weren't very far apart, Sega had been selling a variant of Master System hardware in Japan for as long as Nintendo had sold the Famicom, so if we need an arbitrary number of years between consoles, then the Master System was more like a mid-gen refresh than Sega's entry to that generation.

The Mega Drive is a fourth gen console, because that is how we've decided to categorise it, along with SNES, PC Engine and other consoles released roughly 1987-1993.

Just to clarify my viewpoint: I consider the Genesis a gen 4 system.  But Sega tried to make it compete directly with the NES.  It failed.  The Genesis sold poorly for the first couple of years, and didn't dent NES sales one bit.  However, the Genesis gave the SNES a serious run for its money.  Sega didn't get to choose which console it competed with.  The market decided.  All of this of course is referring specifically to the North American market.  (Back in those days, the markets for Japan and NA were out of sync and the Genesis/Mega Drive wasn't terribly successful in Japan anyway.)

So Genesis is gen 4, but it tried to be gen 3 (and failed).

One big reason to talk about generations is to talk about which consoles are competing with each other.  Genesis was trying to compete with a Gen 3 system.  It was doing so very obviously in it's advertising.

I mean, it's very possible to make a commercial without mentioning your competitor at all.  Game companies do it all the time even to this day.  But in the context of 1989, the NES had an incredible amount of market share.  NES was in fact the most dominant home console of all time.  Genesis wanted some of that market share, so it was trying to compete directly with the NES.  That is why I am saying they were trying to be gen 3 again.  They wanted a second chance to beat the NES.  

In the end though a company does not decide which generation its console is in.  Genesis was gen 4 even if it tried its best to compete directly with a gen 3 console.  This wasn't really obvious until the SNES was launched, but Genesis was really a gen 4 system the whole time whether they wanted it to be or not.

The last i heard of "bits" was early Sega Dreamcast commercials that refer to it as a 128 bit console but those didn't last. the talk of "bits" was on the way out by then. I've never hear of 132 bits tho. Witch console was reffered to as 132 bits?

What!? Nintendo had a near monopoly at the time and sega managed to take a lot of market share. I say it was very sucessfull