The types of games we played in the 16 bit age were frequently the same styles of the generation before. About the only thing that appeared in large numbers that didn't really already exist beyond perhaps an oddity or two, was the popularization of the fighting game genre.

I'd say that one could make that argument for most transitions in this industry. Rare is something like the 32/64 bit era and the radical change in types of games that occurred with it.

So that argument, if anyone uses that to defend lumping the Colecovision and such into the same category as it predecessors, rings pretty hollow.