My first Genesis was a tragedy. I fell into the Sonic hype of 1992. I was about 12. Sonic 2 was in stores and Sonic Genesis bundles were selling like crazy at a cheap price. I got it, played Sonic 1/2 like a madman. Afterwords I didn't buy anything else, just rented games from 1993 all the way until late 1994 only bought one game. Sonic & Knuckles. :lol I blame the Sega of America marketing for shoving SONIC down our throats and ignoring every other game on the system.
It collected dust for many years and the box started to fall apart. Even caught one of my old cats chewing ON the box...I sold it off and never saw it again...I did end up buying a cart of Batman Returns for $5 back in 1993 (which was a STEAL back then!) I luckily played and beat the game after 4-5 months of practice lol
I also had STRIDER II for Genesis which ended up at my house because my brother's good friend brought it over and he never came back to our house to get it back.
Not to mention the free mail-in offer from Cookie Crisp Cereal in 1995 for a free Sega Genesis game, which happened to be COLUMNS.
So yeah 5 games for a system I kept from 1992 until 1996.
I didn't reunite with the Genesis until I was 19 and a Junior in High School. I met my best friend at the time and he had a very solid Sega Saturn collection. However Toys R Us was still selling Genesis 3 systems and games at the time. He picked up CastleVania Bloodlines and Contra Hard Cops. I've never played them, only read about them in SEGA VISIONS magazine back in the mid-90's. I sat down and played CastleVania Bloodlines, only to realize that holy cow I can't believe how much I missed out! So I spent the summer of 2000 and 2001 tracking down every tidbit of what Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X had to offer. Which gave me greater respect for the system that is treated like a Rankin Bass production of the Island of Misfits Toys compared to the NES and Super NES.
There is so so much the Genesis and it's foreign brother the MegaDrive had to offer that went COMPLETELY ignored due to weird marketing schemes. Since most game purchases I made as a kid were from word of mouth or from what was popular among the neighborhood kids.