I agree, while the Sega CD did suffer from some bad decisions (i.e. FMV), it also had some of the best games on any sega system.
-Sonic CD
-Snatcher
-Lunar 1 & 2
-Popful Mail
-Flink
& a pretty decent console port of Wing Commander. And the 32X was cart based, but they did release a few (sadly FMV) disc's that utilized both the 32X & the Sega CD. Though the 32X remains as one of the most useless pieces of hardware in all of gaming, it did strangely improve the resolution (slightly) of pre-existing genesis/SCD games.
Now if Sega had actually backed the Sega CD with something other than FMV crap, it would have done much better. Phantasy Star IV was screaming to be a Sega CD title, but sega was too foolish to port it.
The 5200 was also far superior to the 2600, though the Joysticks did have a near 100% fail rate, and always burned out after a while.