When the dominant gameplay paradigms get OLD

i would say though that the FPS stage will probably remain around for still some time as the majority style of favoured gameplay, mainly because it can be applied to a great many themes and it seems developers of them rely on hardware upgrades rather than innovative ideas to improve their products.

You could say Doom is simply Galaga in 3D + rooms.

The games I listed DO all have some things in common

1. Similar pacing: near-constant action with knuckle-cracking breaks between stages - as differentiated from turn-based or even action RPGs
2. Similar primary method of progress: Destroy things which are arranged in a hierarchy - as differentiated from puzzlers or more exploratory titles
3. Similar ratios of reflex/problem solving activity: About 9:1 or greater - as differentiated from tactical or adventure games

There could be lots of little trees like this one, and it could be improved on quite a bit I'm sure. Towards a taxonomy of games?

This isn't really linear. Galaga doesn't really feed into Super Mario Brothers... if anything, Pitfall feeds into Super Mario Brothers. Pitfall came out in 82 and Galaga came out in 81. Pitfall was pretty popular, but was a home game whereas Galaga was an arcade game first.

Basically, the problem with your list is that there were many games and many genres, even back in the early 80s, and that soup influenced what followed. It wasn't a natural progression from one popular game to the next.

Doom/Wolfenstein 3d seem to me influenced more by, say, Wing Commander than by Street Fighter. Three dimensional space is the key component. Wing Commander feeds back to Star Wars and vector graphics games, not Galaga. Galaga is a completely different track that leads to Gradius and 1942 but also Madden Football, for example.

The trick is to not confuse gameplay with genre, which can be hard.

I wasn't saying that Super Mario's gameplay somehow evolved into Street Fighter, that's pretty preposterous (throwing fireballs notwithstanding) - I was saying the side scroller mechanic got run into the ground, and was supplanted by fighters, which then got beaten to death (ha ha!) and were replaced in marquee status by 3D shootemups.

I was trying to find the common threads between the marquee games - commonly these are the titles that find their way into launch flagships for new technology/consoles and become hallmarks, even though usually there are multiple examples of preceding games which did the same basic thing (just not necessarily as well).

they're sorta concurrent too, coz there's the rouge->diablo gameplay too (ghosts and goblins or whatever along the way)

+tetrislike.

* Roguelike
* Tetrislike
* Galagalike
* Paclike
* Utopialike

where's Skate or Die fit into this?

what's also interesting is the failure (otoh) of attempts to hybridize, i can remember a late 90s era PC game that tried to combine an fps + rts in that you were an OGRE style tank and you had to call in builds for factories and allies etc that happened around you. not very good, never done again i don't think

I was considering taking it back to the shop, but luckily the non-story games (fight crime as Spidey, go on point-scoring rampage as Venom) are both half-hour-blast fun, so I've got a reason to keep it.