The Genesis / MegaDrive is FAR superior to the SNES / Super Famicom. Let's compare the specs.

MegaDrive: CPU is MC68000. Very efficient chip, running at a blazing 7.6 MHz. On a full 16-bit bus, so there is no bottleneck.

SFC: CPU is a cheap 65c816 chip, so bad you'd find it for sale at Radio Shack in the spare parts department.. @ approx. 2.6 and 3.5 MHz speeds .. on 8-bit bus, making data transfer painfully slow.

MegaDrive: ROM access can occur while the machine is working due to DMA (Direct memory access). ROM can be copied into RAM WITHOUT consulting the CPU, leaving it to keep procesing game data instead.

SFC: ROM access can only occur when the CPU is not busy, causing lag. ROM reads are also abysmally slow due to the fact that all data MUST pass from ROM to the CPU (on a crippled bus), THEN to the memory. And it must wait until the CPU is finished with any processing it is doing.

MegaDrive: 512 Color palette, Great for normal games, but looks terrible in the Sega CD video clips. But, the SFC never had a CD component (officially released, anyway.)

SFC: approx. 32,000 color palette, far superior .. but not really necessary, as sprite based games don't NEED such a wide range of colors .. The SFC does technically have the lead here, though.

MegaDrive: High-speed Zilog Z80 CPU @ 4 MHz handles sound. That's right, 4 MHz, exceeding the max speed of the MAIN CPU of the SFC. And this is just for sound processing. Add to this a high quality yamaha YM2612 chip, and you get awesome sound quality. The Z80 allows for quicker processing of sound data without burdening the main CPU, for more rapid and complex music and audio sampling.

SFC: Cheap sound hardware. The music did sound decent, but it had nowhere near the clarity of the MD's. Also, due to slow sound processing, music could not be terribly complex, so generally you'd just hear a main melody, no background elements to the music in most cases.

MegaDrive: Backward-compatible with Sega's previous machine, the Sega Master System. All that needed to be done was to initiate a software switch or pull a pin high or low on the cartridge slot (and rearrange the data/address lines), to play SMS titles. This is why the power base works so well .. all it needs to do is swap a few leads around.

SFC: The CPU is backward compatible with the NES .. as though Nintendo originally intended to make this machine able to run original NES/Famicom titles. Then they seem to have just abandoned that idea by using sound and video hardware 100% INcompatible with the NES/Famicom software library. Yet, even with all the more advanced parts they added, they kept the abysmal CPU. Cost cutting measures, anyone? .. This is why the NES adapters (super 7, I think one is called?) for this machine have the vital parts of a NES built into them for compatibility. It's just a NES in a cartridge.

I'd call this an open-and-shut case.