When you really think about it though, Smash Bros history is just filled with anti-competitive changes.

> It's accessible (no crazy button combos)

Melee is not. You need to consistently wavedash into double-shine combos while foxtrotting to remain competitive. Every landing must be L-canceled (especially during combos). Its a horribly inaccessible game, and was all we had for many years.

Following Melee was Brawl: where "tripping" was invented to randomize the game and piss off competitive players. The most popular "Brawl" was the version people __hacked__ to rebalance the game (taking advantage of the Epona glitch from Twilight Princess to install the Homebrew channel: you can remove tripping and arbitrarily rebalance the Brawl game entirely). It wasn't until Smash4 (WiiU, 2014) that players got an actually competitive game.

Smash Ultimate is finally a very, very good game. But it makes no sense to me why the Smash community stuck with it through the Melee and Brawl years.

> Cartoon violence, not realistic simulated violence. I think that's a major driver.

I think that's a good point. The Smash series (and Marvel vs Capcom series) was timid on violence and sexiness... focusing mostly at the "cartoon" level that was mainstream and acceptable.

The other fighting games leaned into violence (Mortal Kombat) and/or sexiness (Soul Calibur's Ivy, Street Fighter's Cammy, KOF Mai) to try to get some appeal, but I think that lowered the chances of the wide mainstream acceptance.

Smash was always a "Kids" game, and therefore safe for kids to play. No reasonable adult would turn off the game or otherwise be worried that their kids were playing that game. Marvel vs Capcom was at a similar level.