Gonna second the Sega Genesis. NES was pretty big, of course, but there was really no "scene" at all then, no magazines to hype up ANYthing, no anticipation. Video games were cool, sure, but no one really knew what much of the legacy really was (compared to what it would become following all of that revolution)
When Genesis and TurboGrafx were coming down the line, there was at least some reasonable hubbub if you paid any attention to gaming. EGM and the like had gamers drooling over the "next generation" in a way that many of us were never really conscious of before (I think it was all pretty much 8-bit before that). Genesis kind of trounced TurboGrafx, though even then it was close (but Sega did have a more recognized name and a strong arcade presence to build off of). With games like Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Thunder Force II, Tommy Lasorda, Last Battle, and of course Altered Beast - none of these games would have been technically feasible on a lesser system at the time. Bringing home that console a couple of months into it's life on these shores was a pretty significant part of my gaming childhood.