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Yeah I think I nailed it but I'd like to expand on this.
On a technical front the SNES wins over the Genesis. It had a slower CPU then the Genesis, but it had the better color palette, better controller, and better sound.*
* Genesis sound depended heavily on the game. Some games had good sound but many, many Genesis games had awful, garbled, static filled sound.
But the Genesis had something the SNES didn't, adult content. Now I DO NOT mean adult content like pornography. Let me explain:
Think of the old Looney Tunes shorts from the 1930's to about the 60's. Those were made for an adult audience. They were originally shown in theaters and were aimed at adults. Now adults back then weren't looking for gruesome violence or pornography so those cartoons survive to this day and kids can watch (most of) them. That said they were aimed at adults and the writing reflected that. That being the case those old cartoons still hold up to this day. You see newer examples in Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. Those two shows were technically aimed at kids, but they wanted adults to watch as well. So you get references that fly over kids heads, but that adults can pick up on and laugh at.
Atari 2600 games were aimed at adults. Hell, some games for the 2600 were blatantly pornographic (though the 2600's graphics being what they were, you didn't see much)
The NES was more kid focused, but didn't shut out the adult audience. Not with games like Ghosts and Goblins, Contra, Captain Skyhawk, and Faxanadu. All games that kids can and did play, but they had that harder edge of an adult oriented game.
By the time the SNES came around it was the 90's and the mentality of "OH GOD WE NEED TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN FROM EVERYTHING!!!!" had taken hold. Nintendo bought into this full force and their games lost that edge. This doesn't mean their games sucked or that no effort was put into them, far from it. However they shut out the older kids and adults who, like me, went over to Sega.
Now the N64 won me back with its smooth, mind blowing (at the time) 3D. That and Rare made Goldeneye. Then they made Perfect Dark. Then they flat out gave Nintendo's censorship policies the middle finger and made Conker's Bad Fur Day... But by then I owned a Playstation which became the best console for adults and older kids, followed by the PS2 which was a huge success!
Nintendo launched the Game Cube which, well, wasn't as successful. The purple color, weird disc format and lack of "hard" games left it trailing behind the PS2 and Xbox
Slight resurrection with the Wii because of its innovative motion controls, but after a few years people got sick of that crap, and sick of breaking their TV's by accidentally throwing the Wii-mote.
So today Nintendo still makes good games and consoles, but outside of little kids and adults with nostalgia filters, nobody cares. Games nowadays, enemies aren't "defeated", they're straight up killed, often in bloody ways. They're written for adults, as they should be.
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