Genesis / Megadrive was for mummy daddy kids. The real SF2CE was played out at the mohallay wali video game ki dukaan. It all started out with SF1 which was difficult as sin and you could only play with either Ryu or Ken. Then came out SF2: The World Warrior, which was as big a jump as going from a horse and carriage to the Harrier Jump Jet, followed shortly by SF2: Champions Edition in 1993. Any other modifications after that were just afterthoughts.
I'm guessing you mean arcades. Most video game stores would most likely have them running on the SNES or maybe Genesis. Most people I knew back then were playing it on SNES.