At the time it was about power, more bits more memory more speed....
Nowadays, even your fridge or washing machine have enough power to run a game https://www.reddit.com/r/itrunsdoom.....linone_washer/
So the "war" is only about exclusive titles
At this time you may choose a brand just because you have friend to share games with.

Of course in US they where already allowed to "comparative" commercial, which produce fun ad like the delivery man of X soda brand deliver in a shop and take a Y soda brand to drink because "it taste better" (in fact both are as good to give you either diabetes or Non Alcoholic Hepatic Syndrome NASH)

And for game it was Sega do what Nintendo-nt'

I'm a 90s kid from Germany too.

Until the Dreamcast, Sega was more of an “arcade thing” to me — with pinball machines and big racing games tucked away in the corners of youth hostels, theme parks (I vividly remember the arcade hall at Holiday Park), indoor water parks, and places like that.

Before the Dreamcast, I was actually more aware of the Philips CD-i than any Sega console. Every Dreamcast display I ever came across was running Ready 2 Rumble, while N64 demo stations always had a variety of different games plugged in. And back then, the PlayStation felt like this edgy thing that ran PC games — just in worse quality (It ran always Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Worms, GTA and things like that in the store ...).

Hmmm to me the console war only started with the X-Box vs. PS2 ...
Before that I was a near completely a PC or C64 player...
As my dad worked for Big Blue at the time, we were one of the few early PC adopters in my town. Everyone else hat either a C64 or equivalent home computer. Consoles were too expensive and the market for pirated games was nonexistent for them.

We played classics like test drive, grand prix, alley cat and many other games most people might not even know existed at all.
For a time I knew the whole labyrinth for Snipes from memory...

Only much much later, when consoles became more and more affordable and the posibilities for hard modding and tinkering became easier, they entered my spectrum.

The first console I owned myself was a SEGA Dreamcast, but that was when it already was out of production and I got it cheap. The allure of being able to tinker with it and wxploit the windows CE OS on it was what got me to it. Later I got an X-Box staying mostly true to my PC heritage...
Nowadays, the litte gaming that I do I do on PC

Where I grew up in Belgium, I never sensed a big console war during the SNES/Megadrive era. For me, the console war was just something that was presented in advertisements. The slogan ‘Sega, c'est plus fort que toi’ (Sega, it's stronger than you) in French adverts is quite iconic and a good reflection of this commercial “war”. In my experience as a child at the time, I never had a debate about which of the two consoles was better. Probably because I knew almost exclusively SNES owners at the time, though.
In shops, the two consoles were displayed in the same way; you'd often find an SNES with a game on demo, next to a Megadrive also game on a demo.

The time when I felt that the console war was at its strongest was during the PS1/N64 era. I personally wanted an N64 because at the time it seemed like the logical next step after having an SNES. Which made me feel a bit lonely when most people, including my close friends at the time, all had PS1s. At the time, we had debates about the two consoles, and I remember that the main argument I used against the PS1 was its horrible loading times. But I recognised that it had a few positive points, such as the CD storage memory, which meant that a game like World Cup 1998 (we loved soccer at the time) was better on the PS1 despite its atrocious loading times, because there was more commentary and the music was better. The same goes for racing games like Gran Turismo or Need for Speed.
Despite the war we sometimes had (without nurturing it in depth), I think we were quite happy to be able to play each other's different games. I remember my best friend enjoyed the multiplayer mode in Goldeneye a lot, for example, perhaps because there was no equivalent on the PS1.

I'm old enough that mine was between Sega and Nintendo. My first console was an Atari 7800 though x3

many of my friends had an Atari, but I had no console as a child (and therefore was unconsolable)

I am from the US and definitely remember seeing all of those here and there being console wars.