You probably know this for fact. Nintendo's top 3-4 franchises make up near 4/5 of the games characters.Zelda,Pokemon, and mario make up a large portion of the characters.i feel as though lesser games are thrown to the side.Kirby i understand because sakurai made kirby (if i recall).I think games like mother deserve more recognition.let's face it, mother didn't get squat compared to mario.Two characters, around 7 trophies, a stage and melee stage.that is far more than what kid icarus got!i think sakurai needs to wake up and stop throwing us characters that are already overused.he should give us more that we don't know.
edit:smash bros is about the best nintendo has to offer in one single game.
anyone agree?
Nintendo's top 4 franchises with playable characters (Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, and DK -- not Kirby) make up 14/35 of the roster, which is 2/5, not 4/5. Even if they did make up the majority of the roster, that's entirely justifiable, they are without a doubt the most popular and well-known of Nintendo's characters among the mass market, and with the general non-hardcore gamer have high recognition value, which is important for a "spin-off" series that strays from its original playstyle, as Smash does to every series involved.
Personally, I would enjoy more characters from less well-known Nintendo games as well, but honestly we should be grateful that a series like Mother, F-Zero, and especially the retro ones get the amount of content they do, considering how minor they are compared to the top series. If actual sales directly effected the roster, Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda would make up like 90% of the roster, as opposed to the 30-something they make up now, and characters from Mother, F-Zero, Fire Emblem, etc would be nowhere to be seen.
Sure, there are a few series that based on the ratio of popularity to playable representation could use a few more reps (like Metroid), or seemed over-repped (like Starfox), but overall the roster is very well balanced, series-wise. There is a reason Mario gets four when F-Zero gets one, and believe me, it could be even more justifiably unbalanced.
As for filling up the roster with unknowns, that would be pretty illogical. Really, the average Smasher only knows about 50%-75% of the roster from outside of Smash, if that. If Sakurai filled up the game with unknowns, it really wouldn't help the hype of the game and would anger many people when logical popular choices aren't included in favor of some semi-popular minor supporting character or obscure protagonist. Sure, a few lesser known characters are fine, and Sakurai does include a couple with each game, but if it became the majority, then there would be more negatives than positives.
yet people asked for geno from super mario rpg and never got him.it's not just mother, nintendo seems to think that smash bros has to be almost full of characters from their most popular series to be successful. they seem to push characters that could be as successful in smash bros aside
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. If Geno was included, he would be a relatively unknown character compared to other ones which you seem to be for, but he would also be another Mario rep, which you seem to be against.
Sakurai includes (for the most part) characters that are important to their series, because it fits the All-Star theme that the games used to promote, and because the most important characters are also usually the most popular. There are a few people clamoring for unknowns, and Sakurai even manages to deliver on that (sure the hardcore knew, but how many others knew who Pit, ROB, and Lucas (outside Japan) were?). It's not illogical that they would want to include characters that would make people want to play the game, like Venus said ↓↓, and it's not like the choices Sakurai makes are unwarranted or imbalanced.