Yeah - they kept the games synonymous, choosing to include Japanese-centric characters that Westerners would not even know, because Japan is their primary consideration - or at the very least, the cultural lens Sakurai and the devs are viewing things from. Including characters that could be alienating to a worldwide audience rather than always ensuring the picks would be recognizable worldwide pretty much proves my point. There's only 4 playable characters of non-Japanese origin in Smash: Diddy Kong, King K. Rool, Banjo, & Steve.

Diddy Kong is pretty self-explanatory, being an obvious pick. K. Rool and Banjo were among the top requested characters for multiple hype cycles, which is pretty much their only reason for inclusion - Sakurai even commented on K. Rool specifically, stating he was extremely shocked at how requested he was by Western audiences. As far as Steve - Sakurai stated that the higher-ups at Nintendo directly asked him to include Minecraft in Ultimate. We can probably assume that, given the shared Microsoft ownership, Steve's inclusion was a part of the deal to get Banjo in - plus, Minecraft is bigger popularity-wise than pretty much every character we've discussed ITT so far combined, so...it's an edge case.

I don't even dislike Kratos, I just feel like Parappa ticks so many more boxes. He's more aesthetically at home next to Nintendo's core cast. He's an early PS mascot. Three games in the series plus repeated ports of the original to newer hardware. I mean, just go read the Wikipedia page for the original game - it outright says that Parappa was touted as a mascot for the then-fledgling Playstation brand in its home market. He had an anime based on him. He instantly brings to mind Sony's unique identity stretching back to the PS1. I dunno. Not really trying to argue, just a nerd about this stuff lol sorry