it did a pretty good job of it, atari had to bolster the library for the 5200 as in stills it just couldn't compete with the colecovision

also the reason some of you might precieve the 16 bit era as the kick off of visuals, that is because the graphics war was subdued inthe US because of the nes's dominance, frankly the 7800 couldn't compete visually and atari's big ticket was the aweful controller claiming that it was the only console with a real joystick, awell atleast midnight mutants and alien brigade are good games

sega on the other hand did run ads using graphics as the highlight, but remember the nes had the vast majority of the market so sega had limited resources and the situation was exaserbated by the horrible marketing from tonka, but graphics card does exist

the sms vs nes ads are fairly common on the european front were the sms had a much more significant presence

It was always around.

I was around during the infamous C64/Spectrum wars in early '80s, and it was as bad as anything today. Some key phrases were 'slow CPU' and 'colour clash'. Speccy had a primitive 'Beeper', while C64 had a great, great sound chip (SID).

back in 89 when the GEN and TG16 were going against the NES and its 90% market share

yes it was, George Plimpton was always comparing the Intellivision and the 2600, didn't you see the ad I posted earlier, as strategyking mentioned the colecovision's whole selling point was the graphics, and don't force me to bring up Dragon's Lair, oh wait , too late