Like, philosophically, what does the phrase mean? It's used to refer to games where you press buttons, or perform some kind of input on some kind of controller, in time to music. But if the inputs are the same and the music is different, is it not a rhythm game anymore? Imagine a game called Guitar Hero Revolution, which is exactly like Guitar Hero, even down to the note charts, but the songs are from Dance Dance Revolution instead. So like, you could pick Killer Queen in the menu, and the note chart and background video would all be from that song as it appears in Guitar Hero, and you'd play it with the guitar controller, but the song you'd hear while doing it is Boom Boom Dollar. It seems wild to say that the genre of a game could change just because its soundtrack did, but can you really say you're playing a rhythm game if you're pressing buttons not in time to music?
What if you took a widely accepted rhythm game - let's say DDR - and played it without sound? Would it matter why there was no sound? It seems even wilder to say you could change a game's genre by muting the TV, but if a DDR game were published without sound, whether by accident or by design, there would be no way to play it by performing inputs in time with the in game music whether the TV was muted or not... which means it would be impossible to distinguish between that hypothetical silent DDR game played on a muted TV and a real DDR game played on a muted TV.
What about other autoscrolling games, like shooters? There's a limited set of inputs over a fixed length of time that lead to passing a stage, with all others resulting in failure, just like in DDR. Is R-Type a rhythm game?
What if you took a widely accepted rhythm game - let's say DDR - and played it without sound? Would it matter why there was no sound? It seems even wilder to say you could change a game's genre by muting the TV, but if a DDR game were published without sound, whether by accident or by design, there would be no way to play it by performing inputs in time with the in game music whether the TV was muted or not... which means it would be impossible to distinguish between that hypothetical silent DDR game played on a muted TV and a real DDR game played on a muted TV.
What about other autoscrolling games, like shooters? There's a limited set of inputs over a fixed length of time that lead to passing a stage, with all others resulting in failure, just like in DDR. Is R-Type a rhythm game?