PSA: The Genesis was not 'better' than the SNES and everyone keeps lying about blast processing
I keep seeing folks in here say the Genesis won the 16-bit war because of blast processing, and that is just marketing talk from a 1992 Sega ad. Sega's own hardware docs show the Genesis ran at 7.6 MHz while the SNES had a 3.58 MHz chip, but the SNES could push more colors on screen at once, 256 versus 64. I owned both back in 1994 after saving $120 from mowing lawns in Fresno, and the Genesis sports games felt faster but the SNES version of Street Fighter II looked cleaner. So the speed thing mattered for Sonic, sure, but it did not make the whole console better for every game. What game do you all point to when you say Genesis was the winner?
The 7.6 vs 3.58 thing is a bit off because those chips do different work, the Genesis CPU is faster but the SNES has that separate sound chip and better graphics modes, so it's not really apples to apples. On colors, the Genesis could show 64 at once but the SNES had more on screen plus that transparency stuff, which is why SF2 looked sharper like you said. For me the Genesis case is Gunstar Heroes and Contra Hard Corps, those run smooth in a way the SNES just couldn't keep up with. But then you look at Yoshi's Island or Donkey Kong Country and the SNES is doing stuff the Genesis can't touch. So neither one won, they just did different things well.