Super Smash Bros. - The Greatest Advertisement in Gaming

It's no secret that I absolutely love the Super Smash Bros. series. Ever since I ran across the original N64 game due to a combination of Nintendo Power and the official website, I have completely loved the series and followed it through three platforms. The reason I loved Smash Bros. so much was simple: it was a cartoony, fun crossover game that took characters from all over Nintendo's library and made them fight each other in any way they could. The funny thing is, at the time I really wasn't a big Nintendo fan. Like, at all. Super Smash Bros. was only the third Nintendo franchise I really got into, believe it or not, after Pokemon and the Mario spinoffs (I hadn't even played a Mario platformer yet!). And boy did Super Smash Bros. expand my horizons in video gaming.

Now, before I start explaining, let me make a point. Here's a list of franchises I have played after being inspired by Smash Bros. in some form or another:
Super Mario Bros. (the mainstream games and certain spinoffs)
The Legend of Zelda
Kirby
Metroid
Star Fox
F-Zero
Metal Gear Solid
Kid Icarus
Earthbound/Mother
Mega Man (through Smash Bros. forums!)
Hotel Dusk
The Legendary Starfy

That's a long list of franchises, isn't it? The point becomes obvious when one realizes that quite a few of the above franchises I have gotten very much into and have purchased quite a few games in! That is a lot of money for Nintendo, and even other companies in some cases! And, even if a character doesn't necessarily show up in Smash Bros., I may still run across his series on a message board and be inspired to play their games, prominently shown in the Mega Man series. Heck, I could probably list a few more franchises, such as the Ace Attorney franchise, but I don't want to be here all day.

If you haven't guess yet, my point is that Super Smash Bros. has a, perhaps intended, side-effect of making people want to look into other games to find out more about their favorite fighters and the like. This should be a surprise to no one. This view lends a definitive reason for a character to be playable in Smash Bros., one that has already been used on one occasion before: Roy.

Roy, if you didn't know, technically debuted in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Why? Because Melee came out just a biiiit before his first Fire Emblem game. So the Japanese designers decided to add him to promote his game. In a similar fashion, the two Fire Emblem characters in Melee inspired many gamers to take interest in the series and got it taken out of Japan! That takes some series advertisement skills!

Where am I going with all this? Simply, the next Smash Bros. game needs more new franchises represented through playable characters. Playable characters are the ultimate way to advertise your franchise, because people will inevitably play as them at some point and from there they will take interest. I firmly believe the series hasn't been taking enough advantage of this: Melee only introduced three new franchises through characters, of which only one was still being made games for. Similarly, Brawl introduced six but two of them were "retro", one of them was a Mario spinoff, and two more were third party. Why is Pikmin the only recent Nintendo franchise being playably represented?! It's a waste of potential advertisement they could've given for plenty of other "deserving" franchises, such as Animal Crossing (represented through everything but a character, annoyingly enough), Custom Robo (has an Assist Trophy), Golden Sun (an Assist Trophy), The Legendary Starfy (another Assist Trophy, and was Japan-only), and maybe even the Wii franchise (no real representation).

Basically, my point is this: as great as it is to add characters to existing franchises, the next Super Smash Bros. should instead focus on playably representing new, recent Nintendo franchises that the audience can easily get a hold of, as well as Japan-only franchises that need introducing to foreign audiences. I believe this could do wonders for smaller, failing franchises and pump up already-popular ones as well.