You may not remember the third generation of gaming that well, if at all. It was the four year generation from 1985 and 1989. It included Nintendo's birth system, the NES, and Sega's first system as well, the Master System. The reason I have not included the first and second generations are because the time frames on those are so vague and they had no clear beginning and end. Not to mention the two video game crashes that took place and screwed up gaming in that era. That's why I'm starting with the third generation. Anyway, what was/is your favorite third generation console. Note: you did not have to live in this era to post here.

The other, lesser known systems of this time were the PV-1000, Epoch Cassette Vision and Supergame VG 3000, if those mean anything to your gaming interests.

Discuss.         Edit: I forgot the Atari 7800, which I guess was fairly successful.

NES.
Its the only one I played besides 1 game on SMS.

NES

The NES, by far.

So many franchises started their life on the system (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Mario, Metroid, Zelda, to name a few).

And relative to its time, the system was even a bigger 'monster' than the Wii is now...It´s the system that truly represented 'Nintendomination', having captured more marketshare than the Playstations/Wii/DS...you name it.

I guess the NES was the only console that people cared about of this generation. And it makes sense. But I thought more people would have played the Master System at least sometime in their lives, seeing as it's a Sega System.

@CatFang

The Master System was actually more popular than the NES in Europe....however, on a global basis, the NES remains the only system to have captured more than 80% marketshare (if I´m not mistaken...and I dunno if the GameBoy managed that too..)...not even the mighty DS manages that.

It was the closest thing a console ever got to a monopoly.

It goes without saying, the NES far and away was great.