According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Jumping Flash invented the 3D platformer.

Sorry, what?

Wolfenstein had countless imitators. Here's a small, non-exhaustive list of Wolfenstein clones that came out before Doom:

• Corridor 7
• Blake Stone
• Ken's Labyrinth
• Super 3D Noah's Ark
• Nitemare 3D
• Catacomb Abyss
• Operation: Body Count
• Shadow Caster
• Rise of the Triad
• Spear of Destiny (Basically Wolfenstein 3D 2)

And it's no wonder it had so many imitators considering it's sales and reach. Wolfenstein sold about 150.000 registered copies plus over 1M shareware versions. Anything that sold into the 6 digits on PC was a smash hit at the time. The secret of Monkey Island, one of the best-selling PC games of the time, barely sold twice as much as Wolfenstein - and unlike Wolfenstein, had retail copies outside the US where the shareware model was very difficult.

I mean, there's a reason why Wolfenstein clone was a common term before DOOM came out, at which point it became a DOOM-like (or Doom clone. Depending on the region and country, some used clone while others used -like), and then after Duke Nukem 3D a Duke-like, and than came the Quake-like until it got settled into the term FPS (yes, it took that long for the term FPS to take off and onlyr eally settled in around the time of release of Half-Life!).

One reason why there were quite a few; but not "tons" of imitators: DOOM came out just 18 months later, by the time many of the games that got influenced by Wolfenstein actually came out, the genre was already called DOOM-like

And even before Wolfenstein, there had been some games that would be considered FPS nowadays. Catacomb 3D or Hovertank 3D, anyone? But those didn't make nearly the push for the genre that Wolfenstein did

Bolded: By that assessment, we would only have FPS, RPG, Action-adventure, beat'em up and Jump'n run (plus maybe the loosely-defined arcade genre), because everything else wouldn't have reached the threshold to become a genre by your metric. RTS? Action-RPG? Racing? Simulations? Sandbox? Fighting games? None of those had enough releases in a year or two to beat even Wolfenstein and it's clones, which by your own account wasn't enough to become a genre. So why ever would those ever have become a genre but Wolfenstein 3D is denied that honor despite inspiring more clones on it's own?

Such a narrow-minded phrase. And historically, factually wrong.

Videogames existed before Pong, be it on Mainframes like Tennis For Two (which predates Pong by 14 years!) or the Arcade cabinet Computer Space (which came out a year before Pong and was a derivative of Spacewar!, which came out 10 years earlier), Videogaming was well on it's way, if if Pong never had existed.

By the way: Spacewar! => First Shooter.

You could do so many things in Pirates! that it could be considered one of the first (if not the first) genre-busting games, as in, Games that have their fingers in so many genre pies tha they don't fit into any category anymore.

Antarctic Adventure was a 1983 game from Konami where you played as a character in a 3D environment that ran and jumped over obstacles. Same with 1987's 3D Worldrunner. Sure, these games were sprite-based rather than polygonal, but is that really what makes a 3D platformer? And even if those didn't count, Alpha Waves came out in 1990 on Amiga. It wasn't necessarily a good game, but it meets the criteria.

Metal gear
Driver
Syphon filter

Death stranding
Uncharted 2

I have always felt weird about how Symphony of the Night is so very often cited as "Metroidvania" defining, amazing as it may be. Not only Metroid should be the only quote to the genre, SotN is not even the first one to do that in the series (that pioneering goes to Castlevania III; heck, one could argue that even Simon's quest got there first).

And it one tried to say well SotN had RPG mechanics well so did Wonder Boy in Monster World in 1991. Funny enough Monster World also did the Ocarina with the face buttons mechanic 7 years before OoT.

I wonder what the first create a game you can share online is? Likely something on PC or 90s consoles that escapes me. Oldest I can think of is Dreamstudio on SEGA Dreamcast. You make little levels then share them online. Mega Man Powered Up did that as well on PSP in 2006. Not talking about editing a track like Excitebike but an entire gamed based around the idea and share online. I know RPG maker was on PS1 but no online but I guess taking your memory card to a friends house?

I remember playing with some game maker program on PC when I was still in high school. That was in the late 80s. Sharing online meant uploading it to a BBS, easier to share it at school in the computer 'lab'.

When the internet came around on universities first, MUD (multi user dungeon) allowed you to make new campaigns basically. That was created in 1978. I guess that counts as the first RPG maker. It's still going as well https://themudworldblog.com/creating-roleplaying-game-campaigns/

I made my first game on MSX early eighties, that was coding in BASIC. Back when you could 'download' or rather record 'games' from the radio onto cassette tape. One way online sharing? I guess you could directly share over the phone ;) (Phone sound quality was soo much better back then)

Google is drawing blanks, doesn't understand first game creator game haha. And I can't remember the name of that game creator program I used at school :/