I booted up Smash and checked which non-character franchises had more than just a couple spirits. By couple, I mean two. Two seems to be the most your regular franchise would get. I'm also not counting franchises that got added through updates as those usually came in batches of three or four no matter what.
StreetPass Mii Plaza
Advance Wars
Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (That's where Prince Sable is from)
Custom Robo
Golden Sun
Magical Vacation
The Legendary Starfy
Rhythm Heaven
Chibi-Robo!
Nintendogs
Shovel Knight*
Culdcept*
ARMS**
*Not technically first party, but Nintendo has some rights to them.
** Formally no character
These are franchises that had more than just the usual 1-2 spirits. In particular Golden Sun and Rhythm Heaven had a lot more than the rest. Are Golden Sun and Rhythm Heaven the franchises that just barely made it? And what of the others? Are they franchises that Nintendo considers important, even if they don't have a character?
I'm mainly focusing on the proposed question of "is this an IP Nintendo considers important", not just with regards to Smash likelihood.
Nintendogs, I mean, yeah absolutely. Hugely successful casual title.
Starfy I would say would definitely have been up there at one point. He used to get consistent, decently popular releases, made cameos, was developed by a longtime Nintendo partner, I think there was certainly A Point where Nintendo considered him a somewhat noteworthy figure. Chibi-Robo is a weird one where the series never really did that well to begin with but Nintendo perservered with it for a long time (whether they did it
right is debatable but I digress....) and I think that does count for something.
Advance Wars is an interesting one for sure. If you were to ask me if Nintendo considers the
Wars series important, I would say probably. But it's yet another matter of regional difference that's at play here - in the West, Advance Wars is the most well-regarded Wars series, but in Japan, what's most fondly remembered is the original Famicom Wars - with that game's commercial in particular being very iconic to a certain generation of Famicom kids. So I....guess I would ultimately say kind of yeah? At least Smash seems to give Advance Wars its flowers.
Custom Robo's a big ol question mark. I haven't looked into its history in the Culture as much as some of the others featured here, but it's one of those series' that always get brought up whenever dead Ninty IP are mentioned, it always comes around whenever a new VC/NSO thing has N64 (at least in Japan....), I think it might be
decently well-regarded? Again, I don't know. I think at least Smash seems to treat it with some regard.
Magical Vacation.....I well and truly have no idea. I know nothing about this series. I have done no research on it. I stand defeated.
I saved Kaeru no Tameni for last cause I think it's the one I have the most interesting insight on - basically, I see it as a lesser-extent version of something like Murasame Castle. It's a very old game that never got any sequels and never left Japan, but it was developed internally by some of the big players at the company (namely it was a Yoshio Sakamoto joint), it's considered a real cult classic/hidden gem from Nintendo's output (mainly in Japan), and it's kept being referenced over the years. So I actually think this one has a stronger case than one might intitially think. Personally I'm a big fan. They should totally put Prince's Adventure as a track in Smash.
In general this question can be a bit tough as Nintendo doesn't really tend to reference a lot of their older, not-in-Smash IP besides, well, Smash. For as much as people meme about companies like SEGA or even Capcom having tons of dead franchises, at least these have had plenty of material over the years that can be used as reference with regards to which IP they treat with reverence - Nintendo not so much, at least not so much stuff that includes these kinds of games.
