You didn't really "collect" but the NES Digital Devil Story game, the first game released in the series allowed you to talk to enemies and recruit them.  The game was released a little over nine years before Pokemon, and the monster recruiting has been a staple for most games in the series since then.  Progress through the game, talk to new monsters, recruit them for help, fuse them to create other monsters, etc.  In the earlier games, the monsters didn't gain levels so you had to either fuse them for a more powerful monster or talk to a newer more powerful monster.  The point is is that you were recruiting and using monsters in order to progress through the game.  Pokemon isn't anything different except that you use only monsters, it's got the "gotta catch 'em all" aspect to it, the graphical style, and it's also a competitive versus style game. 

Playstation All Stars is similar in that respect.  The graphics and style of game are just like Super Smash Bros, so it's indeed a ripoff, but it's still its own game.

why I think PSASBR, it getting the rip-off tag is clearly because the what nintendo has created hasn't really been explored: theies no deny that Sony copied Nintendo's battle system, but then what makes Street Fighter/Tekken/Mortal/Blazblue so different from each other? all basically have: light/medium/heavy hit/block but the buttons are somewhat changed,(albeit Tekken moves in a 3 demensional space) or the standard L1 R1 to shoot or O to chrouch/hold to prone formual that has been ABUSED this gen.

I think are line of what a rip-off means come from are own understanding of the word, you can call PSASBR a rip-off and it will affect me none, and I will respect your opinion.

I only played Demikids so myu knowledge of the series is a bit sketchy, but from what I played it was only similar to Pokemon in the vaguest sense.  You did collect monsters, but that's about where the similarities ended.  Battles were standard party based affairs rather than the 1 on 1 of Pokemon, they fused instead of evolved, and you selected attacks from an ever growing list rather than the four move limit in Smash Bros.  Nothing like HMs to my recollection, and you battled random monsters and not other trainers.  No gyms, no badges, different art style, different presentation.  

The point is, you can make two different games about monster collecting, and not have the games be rip offs.  You can make two different four player fighters.  Nobody would call Powerstone a Smash Bros rip off.  You can even have two differnt crossover fighters like Dissidia and Smash.  In the case of PASBR, Sony simply takes way too much from their source and adds too little of their own to be classified as anything but a rip off.  And if people are fine with that, that's their business.  I'm not Nintendo's lawyer or anything.  

I'm not all that familar with Blazblue or tekken, but let's take Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter 2.

One thing that immediately distinguishes MK is its graphical style.  Whereas SF2 is traditional sprites, MK used mocap and photorealistic (for the time) aesthetics.  They also emphasized blood and violence.

In MK 1-3, each character shares the same basic set of moves, with a few specials to differentiate.  Back and low kick will always do the same sweep, whereas down and hp will always do an uppercut.  Street Fighter 2 gives each character a wide variety of moves.  With Dhalsim down heavy punch will do a stretchy arm attack, E Honda will sweep the groung, and dhalsim will uppercut.  In addition the physics in general are way different.  Hitstun in early MK games were pretty much non existent which limited the potential of true combos.  You could heavy punch for an eternity until your opponent decided to put up their guard (which has a dedicated button).  In comparison, Street Fighter 2 had high hitstun which made a variety of combos possible.  In general, MK is a really stiff game compared to Street Fighter with fewer moves that can cancel into one another and so forth.

Another difference is the special move system.  MK focussed on tapping motions (i.e. right right kick for Liu Kang's flying kick) while Street Fighter utilized fluid motions (i.e. down forward punch for Hadokens).

Oh and fatalities.

So, from physics, to visuals, to controls, and even down to the sounds of the game, their are a whole lot of difference between the two games.  It's similar to the situation with Shin Megami Tensai and Pokemon.  Both games are about beating an opponent in a one on one battle, but within that framework, the games show more similarities than differences.  In the case of Smash Brothers vs PSABR, I find that the similarities far outweigh the differences, as Kantor does a pretty good job of pointing out.

I think you're overaching a tad bit, but somewhat proving my case; at it's core  street fighter and mortal combat are the same, you punch/kick/jump/ grab/throw, what Capcom and Netheralms studious add in is what separates them apart.

PSABR is not a carbon-copy of SSB, from what T've seen there's no percentage linked to each character, and players have 3 levels of  speacials that they can use and that's the only way you can get knocked off the map unlike SSB where when you reach about 150%, you're screwed, and the specials randomly pop up and you have to fight to get it

these differences are what will make PSASBR different and we haven't even seen the other modes that will be included, so who knows what the end product will be.

Right, but that's the only difference people have been able to point out so far.  Aside from the way they do specials, what is difference?  With MK, you could point out the physics, the visual style, the overall combat system and mechanics, input method for special moves, etc.

With PSABR, that's not the case.  They have double jumping, brawls floaty jump mechanics, the physics and the way people fly back from an attack (not the case in most fighting games), the visual style, airdodging (something I don't recall seeing in any other fighter), the input method for attacks, and so on.

So when comparing Street Fighter vs MK you can make broad generalizations.  Both have punching, both have kicking, etc.  In Brawl vs PSABR, you can get way more specific.  Both have similar airdodging mechanics, rolling is done the exact same way and is universal, the jump mechanics seem the same, the input method for moves is the same.  Maybe the final product will shock me with something astounding unique, but right now, I can only base my opinion on what I've seen which is basically the beta.  If the final product shows me that I've been wrong, I'll happily admit that.