I remember the advertising well which extended into gaming magazines like Nintendo Power.  I don't remember anyone comparing Genesis and SNES except briefly someone telling me Genesis was better because it had blood in Mortal Kombat.  But for the most part I don't remember hardly anyone, other than myself, having either a SNES or a Genesis.  I got a SNES when I was a Junior in high school and it was stolen when I was a Senior.  Then I bought a Genesis in my first year of college, but I have a hard time remembering anyone else with either system.  

This was in stark contrast to the NES.  The NES was everywhere.  After a couple of years every kid on my block had an NES.  Kids I was only mildly acquianted with at school would swap NES games with me for a week.  The NES was a huge cultural phenomenon.  There are several people I know who had the NES as their last console and never got anything after.

By the time the 90's came around I mostly remember my friends being into PC gaming.  PC gaming had turned into something amazing in the 90's.  It was far beyond the clunky bullcrap that was 80's PC gaming, and it was also far more innovative than 21st century PC gaming.  In fact, in the past few years I have gone back to playing Genesis and SNES games more because I missed a lot of good ones in the 90's.  There were too many good PC games at the time.

The irony of this ad is that the game they chose to represent the SNES, Mario Kart, is a game that couldn't be done on the Megadrive.

Amigas were for geeks who didn't know how to use a joypad.

I convinced my nextdoor neighbour to get a MegaDrive because I already owned a SNES. He still hasn't forgiven me.

Apart from blood in Mortal Kombat there wasn't any console wars, the battle was between geeks and the cool kids.

Yeah I remember the ridicule from Genesis fans if you had an SNES. I didn't care, I knew I was playing timeless classica like A Link to the Past.

Amigas and PCs were the preferred choice for the ease of pirating games. Copy parties were rampant, only losers bought games. A stack of 3.25" floppy disks was all you needed. It's still a mystery to me where all those games came from. I didn't start buying games until after high school.

My first system was a C64 but I didn't have a computer science degree so I had to get my older brother to type in the code everytime I wanted to play a game then pray for the next 10 minutes that it would load. Then I had to work out how to get the joystick working instead of using default keys. Every game had a different setup. The NES/Master System were a godsend for us console kiddies. Yeah, the games cost 10-20 times the retail price of C64 games but they loaded every single time (apart from the occasional blow) and you could play half an hr of Mario or Tetris before school while the C64 was still deciding whether it was gonna load up. And most importantly you got the old TV. My early NES years were mostly in black and white but the games still loaded.

Once Street Fighter 2 arrived on the next-gen consoles, every older brother had to concede that consoles were superior to their geekboxes. So while you were having your copy parties and talking about kilobytes we were having real parties where everybody played SF2 because consoles were portable enough to go anywhere we damn well wanted them to go. The older boys used to invite me to parties because us 'console kiddies' were the only ones who could do the Capcom code fast enough to register.

Was a SNES guy. I played Sonic 2 over friends as a guilty pleasure. I always found the controller weird yet cooler. But all the kids preferred the platformers and RPGs on Nintendo

I grew up poor. Didn't have much until a friend of the family bought me a Genesis. Funny thing is most kids wanted a SNES like me and that's why I ended up with a Sega. I was Sega fanboy by default even though my heart was with Nintendo. I convinced a friend once to trade his GameGear for my GB which was unheard of at that time. Regretted that. Then years later...I went to purchase a PS and they too were sold out so I ended up with a Saturn. Segas in my blood now and even though I'm well aware of which company delivered a better overall experience...I'll defend Sega til I die.

Yeah but even you have to admit that the little blue rat was never actually faster than Mario.

edit: can I just confirm that we won't get banned for 30yr old console/computer fanboy warring?

I just had a SNES. I knew maybe one person who had a Mega Drive. Never experienced any war tbh.