Yeah, I could start a whole other thing about how NEC had the 2nd most dominant console platform and the most dominant PCs and then was out of the market completely within 8 years, but I guess that’s for another time.
I do think it was a good business approach to lean on cart expansion, especially because others wound up relying on hardware expansion which in a way is more expensive and uncertain for the consumer and the developer (i.e. do I really want to make this 32X game, how big will the audience be, and will anyone else support it).
But I still view the megadrive as an underdog vs the SNES when it comes to sound chip, software libraries (right??), and native hardware techniques, so I’m mostly sticking with my answer, even if the processor was faster! Like, the laziest snes music has a better soundscape than the laziest genesis soundscape because of that snes soundchip. Of course with the best of both it’s a tossup, but I’d argue there are more “best-sounding” or at least unique-sounding genesis games than snes games because people have to try. Square Enix just used the basic soundscape very well on snes. waterworld on snes did something exceptional because it didn’t try to “sound like a snes game.” meanwhile castlevania bloodlines and streets of rage just wrote new software to make something you’d never heard before.
It’s also interesting how you get these kinds of games, especially western ones, where you hear the title and you think “that’s probably better on genesis.” like Robocop vs Terminator. Can anyone imagine the better version being on SNES? Probably not.