At least you came out with the elitism early.
If Smash isn't a "real fighting game," then how would it make sense to balance the game in the same manner? Should FPS games copy level design for platformers? I certainly think not.
No, but something they DO is balance their games with conventions that work. Games like Guilty Gear and Street Fighter II/IV have revisions that do what many games call tier flips. They take the best characters and keep them as they are/remove tools that nobody else has access to, or gives some of those tools to the bottom. What generally happens is the game gets the previous worst characters to be the best, and then they either add miniscule buffs/ nerfs to bring it to the middle.
FPS works the same way. When Valve realized that the Scout couldn't move around an Engineer, they introduced Bonk! which if you don't know beats the Engineer's Sentries, but removes the pistol, which really hurts him against the weaker classes like the Spy and the Pyro.(to be fair, I haven't played TF2 SINCE these patches, and a lot of the new patches change the game to a degree that it isn't the same game, so I can't really make a comment). That Being said, the only FPS you can compare this to is a Class based shooter. In games like Halo, UT, and Counterstrike, people all have access to the same guns, and it becomes more about twitch than actual strategy, and doesn't allow for tactical thinking in the first place. Everyone eventually devolves to one or two guns that are a little better, and sticks with them.
In a fighter, traditional or otherwise, every character needs to have tools. They need to maintain an even margin along the 'Average' This is the problem that Melee (and games like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 for that matter) have. They have an incredibly high margin for the top tiers, and an incredibly low margin for everyone else.
In Melee, Fox, Falco, Marth, Shiek stand very clearly above the rest. Sure, Jigglypuff is great, Falcon and Peach less so, but what can you really tell me about the matchups past that? What do you do in the Fox vs Kirby matchup differently? What can Luigi do to throw off Falco? What does Roy have against Mario?
I'm saying that you guys understand the matchups between the top 4-10 pretty well.
What do you know about the Mid v. Mid?
Also, To whoever said 'What characters have hopeless situations'
Game and Watch cannot win against Falcon, Falco, Fox. He has a couple cool combos that only work on the Spaceys, but they are so fast that he can't do a damn thing. His moves are so slow that the best he can do is dodge, and even then, that only works for one or two hits.
