The fact that nobody ever brings up Splatoon or Animal Crossing in Smash speculation feels less like someone adamantly insiting "the sky is not blue" and moreso like watching in anticipation as an alien that has crash landed on Earth at night is about to find out that the sky is blue.
I'm just saying, if we had better copyright laws, you'd be able to make that without going through excessive licensing and being forced to make the "Knuckles" aspect central to marketing to make the money back.