Originally Posted by
StarMist
But they aren't different genres. Phantasy Star especially isn't much removed from PDS, a single player offline affair put up against the Final Fantasies on Playstation. Nights does play somewhat like Sonic yet more narrowly (arcadelike): the only exploration to be had is bootlessly wandering the dreamworld floor. VO is still a fighting game like EC, except polygonal; anyway 2D fighting games had not run their course by any means--sometime in the 6th gen, perhaps, though MvsC fans will tell you otherwise, but not in the 5th where you can see all those successful Capcom and SNK ports along with the birth of Guilty Gear. And SH/Afterburner's genre was a solid decade old when Panzer Dragoon came out; the 3D changes are important but it's still very much the same genre. And Outrun was a modern style racer when it came out, only using scaling because polygons weren't feasible: it's not overhead or sidewise, it's chase view which is what's most important, one can see the road expanding ahead of oneself; on Saturn it would've got an optional cockpit/1stP view.
Ecco I mentioned presuming that on the Saturn he would've had something 3D, not a continuation of the Genesis style.