It doesn't technically count because it's not a "licensed" property, but I'd put up the Dynasty Warriors series. On one hand, the source material (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) is a classic in China and I would never say that DW is somehow more popular than RTK in China, but it brought worldwide attention to the series (as evidenced by my own anecdote, after playing DW3, I ended up buying an english translation of the novel and read through the whole damn thing). It also technically doesn't count since it's thousands of years old and thus far beyond anyone having copyright and wanting to "license" it. That said, I still think it deserves a place in the discussion, because I think it totally meets the criteria.