You can always just contract the character out. Pay Square a small fee once, get the character in the game, and never use him again. It's what they're doing for Sonic.
You guys make it sound like it's as difficult as a man giving birth. It's really not that farfetched--games and such do it all the time.
EDIT: And Nintendo is no stranger. Think of games like Diddy Kong Racing DS or Mario and Sonic Olympics. Nintendo licensed out their characters to both Rare and Sega for those games. Just as well, Namo held the Star Fox license for a while, Sega held F-Zero, and Hudson makes the Mario Party games (as well as Wario Blast). So Nintendo has a reputation with these companies for being OK with sharing properties. And considering that Square-Enix made Itadaki Street DS recently and reused music from Mario RPG, they are still accessing original material from the game as well as doing stuff with the Mario license (that and Mario Hoops, for the DS). And if we think about what they've done for Nintendo in the past year or so, they're releasing the first full WiiWare game alongside whatever Nintendo is releasing. And the only reason we don't see their games on the VC is just because they're remake happy. Otherwise, they're still buddy-buddy with the Big N. They'd kill to see one of their properties hit it big on a Nintendo console. MIght as well be Mario RPG, in my opinion.
