Dumpster

[A Black Falcon]

Oh you're totally right! F-Zero GX and Gran Turismo are nothing alike, even though...

-They're both in the racing genre
-The objective of both games is to race around a track and try to beat your opponents
-Both games allow you to race for money which allows you to buy parts for your car
-Both games feature the same basic control system which is accelerate, turn, and brake
-Both games have multiplayer modes where you race against other opponents

Yup, not even in the same genre!

and (you repeat yourself)

Going by your logic you could say that Mario Kart doesn't belong its own sub genre because it follows the same basic gameplay mechanics as Rad Racer. Same thing goes for F-Zero, GT, etc.

Wrong. In Mario Kart, you race, sure... but its DRAMATICALLY different. Totally different handling. Totally different speed. Track design. It has weapons. Etc, etc. Those make for a difference orders of magnitude greater than the one between Empire and Wars... no question there. I can't see how you could possibly think that Empire and Wars are as different as Mario Kart and Gran Turismo! The differences between MK and GT are enough for them to be in very different subgenres. Wars and Empire? The differences between them are no greater than between plenty of other strategy games that are put in the same genre, certainly! Far less than some, I'd certainly say (like how about Myth and Age of Empires are both RTSes, perhaps? Or how about F-Zero and Rush? Etc...).

And Gran Turismo dates back several decades as a real-life "sport". Or even better, you can trace the origins of Gran Turismo to several millennia ago back to the days of Chariot racing. Same basic concept.

Umm... so? I was comparing that to Wars' date of 1988, of course...

I'd have mentioned the date of the first computer version of Empire, but I don't know when they did the PDP-11 version. I do know that that PC port you can download there is from 1983, though.