They were a big step up from the original nintendo cartridges we blew in and wiped with alcohol to keep Tyson winking, but I went the Sega route as Genesis was a better system at the time, but that of course is debatable. Happy people still are interested in the archaic gaming systems.
Not sure how any of these except maybe the Dreamcast (and then not by that much - it was almost literally a contemporary arcade board clone) were examples of “ahead of its time”.
The PAL SNES just reused the curved design of the original Japanese Super Famicom. I also find it way more appealing than the US version, but I grew up in Europe, so it is the one that I saw back in the day.
On the S-RTC, it was used in that specific game to control time ruin events. When you start the game you're asked to input date and time, and from there the game tracks time to enable certain events.