To be fair tho the US market has always been the largest gaming market. So if NES failed in the US,gaming would look a lot different for everyone. Nintendo likely stuck to Japan after that and while I adore SEGA. They would not have had near the impact Nintendo did. Genesis was a direct response to NES success. So  SEGA would have probably given up after SMS failure.

Hmm not exactly happened in my region, we just got four of them(Genesis, Game Gear, SNES and Game Boy) for mainly first party games, so... no.. Everything was fine until 8th generation began the console wars here.

I had the SNES and really didn't notice a console war at the time. I did have a few friends that had the Genesis and I thought the Sega CD was neat when I tried it over at a friends house. I really didn't notice the competition/game wars until the N64/Playstation/Saturn days when Sony had anti Nintendo ads, and Nintendo had some funny vhs tapes through Nintendo Power that made fun of Sega and Sony.

Same for me actually. I lived in the Netherlands until 2002, never noticed any console war. Some had MSX, some C64, some Nintendo, some Sega. Cartridge systems were less popular due to incompatibility with the rampant piracy in those days.

I didn't notice any console war until XBox joined the scene. MS butting in started the whole thing, especially since it 'stole' Halo away from PC. Although since PC had plenty better shooters, nobody really cared. We were too busy shooting each other in LAN setups. Not until the ps3 and 360 did the console 'war' become a thing. But really only on vgchartz lol. I've always bought all consoles since the ps1, except the xbox one. Biggest reason, ran out of space lol. Series X being bigger again is a big negative for me...

The first console war I lived through while being aware of it was the 5th gen, and I didn't really care as my best mate had a PS1 so I played Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Croc at his place and he played Banjo Kazooie, Mario 64, and Lylat Wars at mine. Between us we had the best of both worlds. Except sadly I didn't know anybody with a Saturn.

Sonic CD is a great game. 

I remember genesis coming out waaay before SNES or so it seemed. Genesis was killer compared to NES. But I owned the NES and was too young to conceive of upgrading. I’d play moonwalked and alteredbeasts at my friend’s but was truly content renting NES cartridges until SNES launched. I wanted to upgrade then and there! The joy factor from fzero and Super Mario World was all absorbing of my time. Then my new friend bought sonic and I loved playing it at his house. And another friend had Spider-Man and Venom. But I still had no interest at all in changing systems. Also, I was more content playing a graphically superior version of Mortal Kombat than having a blood code on a genki version. I thought the sega marketing was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen with the wack rappers and oddball logos. Even those my vote was decided, I never argued or thought of it as a console war. I loved being able to play those other games at friends houses! I tried to be a hipster sorta and bought a turbo graphics 16 but that turned into a mistake. Ninja Spirit and Bonk was super cool it was a cool experience for me until it broke from traveling.

The sales numbers say otherwise, but I don't really remember any real war going on back then between Nintendo and Sega here in germany. From what I saw, Nintendo absolutely destroyed the Mega Drive. I remember one time seeing the Mega Drive for 50 bucks in the store and still nobody wanted to have it. The space for Sega was tiny, everything was absolutely dominated by Nintendo. But oh well, I was like 8 years old back then, so maybe I don't remember it all correctly...

The most interesting console war was PS3 VS Wii VS X360, a total neck to neck between Sony and Microsoft. All of them won in the end.

That one probably ranks as the second best after SNES vs Megadrive for me. It was such a great underdog story, with the "weak" Wii, coming off two lost generations for Nintendo, staging a massive comeback and beating Xbox and Playstation despite the latter having so much more power and third party backing.