Splatoon is Nintendo’s most successful new franchise, so successful that the Inklings have made it to other Nintendo games such as Mario Kart and the upcoming Super Smash Bros.

When asked by Game Informer about how he feels about Splatoon characters making it to other crossover games, Splatoon Producer, Hisashi Nogami, says that it is rewarding to see the Splatoon characters be accepted and grow within the community.

How does it feel to see your characters, the inklings, go go-karting with Mario, and now seeing them as a part of the Super Smash Bros. roster for the upcoming Switch title? What does that mean to you to see them elevated to that level?

Of course it’s one thing to see fans get excited for characters like Callie and Marie or Pearl and Marina from Off the Hook, but for me, the game and its contents as a whole are sort of a character or a child that I’ve helped create. To see the game’s content as a whole accepted this much and mean this much to people has been really impactful and a really wonderful thing for me to see.

The thing that I want to do as a developer is come up with new kinds of gameplay. Thinking about it in that way, characters are sort of byproducts of that process. That said, when we create characters, we do hope they have an affection for them, and we create them to give them as much of that potential as possible.

Seeing our characters get brought into Mario Kart or Smash Bros. is kind of self-affirming to us that we made some good choices with these characters. It’s rewarding to see them accepted and grow stronger by their inclusion in these other franchises.

You can read the full interview from Game Informer here.