I gotta go with platformers personally, as I think they are a brilliant, timeless genre of games, although these days a bit "withered" in popularity (the "proper" 3-D ones in particular). I just find it's the kind of genre where solid gameplay mechanics play the biggest role but it also allows for a lot of creativity to flourish. I was also fond of the fighting game trend of the early 90s to mid 90s. It seemed as a kinda "hard core" era for Arcade and console gaming where it was expected from players to know finger-bending combos and had a real competitive spirit to it. The modern variant would be the military first-person shooter game but I personally find those got quite watered-down and sameish these days. It's also interesting to see the explosion of popularity of "sandboxy" games in general. Maybe a sign that gamers want more "creative" games?
But there are also examples of "came and went away" genres such as Japanese-style RPGs (got big during the SNES era and even bigger after Final Fantasy VII came out but kinda faded in popularity or became more a handheld "niche"), the "twitch" f-p shooters, which were big on the PC in late 90s and early 2000s but made way for the more "realistic" ones and a few other examples.
A trully "timeless" genre seems to be the "space shooter" which was there since the beginning of gaming time and only changed a bit of it's "skin" during all this time. And in an abstract kinda way, the "Sports" game would also be timeless, as would the racing game, although those were ever-popular.
Opinions?
