Like everyone else, I mostly remember being amazed by both the graphics and the price. Nobody I knew had one, except one guy who acquired it using money he’d raised through, shall we say, illicit means. As such, he kept it under his bed all the time in case his parents ever found out and nobody saw it. Come to think of it, he may have been making the whole thing up…
As mentioned elsewhere, this was the first system I was enthusiastic about emulating.
About 13 years ago, I made this fella.
https://i.imgur.com/hZYFEmC.jpg
It was a huge amount of fun to build and I was very happy with the result. I hardly play it, but sometimes just put it on and let it cycle through games to fill the house with an arcade-y ambiance.
It started off life with an old PC in it, but currently runs a Raspberry Pi 3.