Mega Drive. Though I did love the Dreamcast, the MegaDrive holds special place for me.

My top 5

Gunstar Heroes
Sonic The Hedgehog 2
Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting
Zombies Ate my Neighbors
World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald

Definitely the Genesis for me. It's the only home console not made by Nintendo that is in my top 5 of all time. It's also the only non-Nintendo system that I bought at launch (well, and Dreamcast) due to the fantastic port of Ghouls 'n Ghosts (a Capcom arcade favorite of mine) which Sega itself actually programmed.

Top 5 games:

1. Phantasy Star 2
2. Streets of Rage 2
3. Ghouls 'n Ghosts
4. Tie: Thunder Force 3 / M.U.S.H.A.
5. Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse

Although I was born in 1999, I sort of grew up with the Mega Drive. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I saw boxes with Sonic on them in the toy store; I thought they looked really cool so I wanted to have one. It turned out to be a retro console with six games pre-installed: Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Columns, Ecco The Dolphin, Alex Kidd In The Enchanted Castle, Gain Ground and The Ooze.

I didn't like Columns and I quickly got stuck in Ecco The Dolphin and The Ooze, but I loved the three other games.

Objectively I think the Megadrive is their best console. It had more great games than any other Sega console and put them ahead of Nintendo for a brief spell in terms of marketshare.

I've voted for the Master System though. It's the first console I ever owned and I have tonnes of nostalgia playing Alex Kidd, Sonic, Shinobi, Gain Ground, Deep Duck Trouble, Castle of Illusion, Asterix and many other classics that I still go back to when I want a retro sesh.

Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive. Damn, this was my very first home console i played, it's still my favorite Sega home console for Sonic games and Disney games.

Dreamcast is followup my 2nd favorite Sega home console. :D

Honorable: Sega Saturn!

Never had a Sega console.

Mega Drive is the classic, and it does have some really great games, but Dreamcast has Skies of Arcadia, which is one of my favourite games of all time. Not just that, but Soul Calibur which IMO, demolishes any of the sequels, including the one with the Create a Character mode (I forget if it was 3 or 4) - the original Soul Calibur was a fighting game that felt like an adventure of epic scale. Sonic Adventure, to me, felt like the next big step in 3D platforming - and while it was a bit hit and miss, it was still hitting home runs - my favourite Sonic game is still 2 and 1 will always have a place in my heart, but Adventure felt like the future in a way games rarely do.

Mega Drive has a lot of other great games. IMO, the best versions of a lot of them are the 3DS ones that make their parallax planes really pop in a beautiful and satisfying way. So, I feel it is a great choice.

My pick for Dreamcast over Mega Drive is largely because I was bedridden with the kissing disease - hospitalized and on IV for a time - and this was the console I had at the time it had the games I needed. Skies of Arcadia I played three times in this period. But I played a ton of Soul Calibur and other games. I was trying to avoid being social, but people would come over to play Soul Calibur with me. It made what would have been a miserable time in my young adult years a lot of fun.

I also see Dreamcast as the first modern console.

Skies of Arcadia, in my view, had one rival on modern consoles, until Xenoblade Chronicles, and that was Final Fantasy X. I mean, I was a huge fan of Xenosaga, but that one ended up a train wreck, no official western release aside from the second game, which is IMO a huge decline from the second, and while a lot of people like the third game the best, to me it felt far too forced - while Xenogears cut out a lot of the character dev stuff from the last 10% of the game (disc 2), you could still see an organic looking story digging into the constructs of a 10,000 year old biological AU. On the other hand, I felt Xenosaga Episode 3 felt more like characters being forced into doing things uncharacteristic for them because the plot required it. But I’ve rambled way off topic - only because Xenosaga I felt should have been the best RPG series of that era; but to me, Skies of Arcadia really takes the throne. It’s not a perfect RPG, but it is so beautiful, even to this day, despite its heavily outdated graphical fidelity. Skies, makes me long for exploration across a beautiful world that doesn’t exist on a level above almost every other RPG of all time. Xenoblade, Makna forest, was the next time I felt it on that level - although, I admit, FFX came close.

Just in case it’s not clear: Dreamcast is my vote.

Oh, and for the bonus question
1. Skies of Arcadia
2. Soul Calibur
3. Code Veronica
4. Sonic Adventure
5. Grandia 2
Bonus: Fire Pro Wrestling D (import)

I am biased by omission. I haven’t really ever played any Sega system not called Dreamcast. I haven’t even played the games on NSO.

But I did love the Dreamcast. I never owned one, but worked at a video store where we had the systems. Customers would come in while we were playing NFL2K and ask “who’s playing?” As if there was a real game on. That was a first for console gaming.

Soul Caliber gave Tekken a run for its money. Soul Reaver looked beautiful, but my favorite experience on the system was absolutely ReVolt, a racing game with RC cars that had expansive levels, fun weapons, and excellent split screen racing. I still have yet to play a game that captures the magic of that game with RC cars, which really is a shame.

We saw the writing on the wall even at launch. The strength of the Sony brand at the time was probably the strongest any company in gaming has ever had. The Dreamcast was dead on arrival, but what was there was excellent. It’s hard to say whether it could have carved out a bigger legacy had production not been terminated, but given the poll results it seems like that short time period left a lasting impression.

Genesis.

Sonic the Hedgehog
Kid Chameleon
Golden Axe
Cobra Command (Sega CD)
Lunar: The Silver Star (Sega CD)

Also, while it doesn't rank among my favorite games of the generation, Altered Beast was a great intro to the system with "Rise from your grave" as the first thing I heard after firing up my Genesis.