Hey! As mentioned to a previous comment of the same nature, I won't be able to leave the other sprites in the final/fuller version of the game.
"I would love to be able to provide the original sprites, the only issue is that 1. I'm not going to be adding any additional poses/necessary assets for them. So they're as they currently are, in a sense. And 2. I don't own the complete rights to those sprites, and I don't want the company who made them to surprise me by saying 'oh yeah you had rights except X Y Z'. They are 'free to use' for commercial projects, but I'm still nervous to use them.
However! I will be assisting with the community who may want to mod the game, and the original sprites are available in a separate project. As such, if people want to mod the game to have the original assets, that'd be doable. I just personally cannot make that content, given it'd double the amount of work that goes into coding the sprites, and the file size would be impacted, too. I also cannot make CGs match the old sprites. ;-; I'm very sorry!"
So I'm fine if people want to retain the old games, and have the old sprites, but the game overall is moving away from them to ensure that they're fully our own and not secretly infringing on any copyright. I'm fine if people want to mod the game and re-add them later down the line, as I'm gonna allow for mods, but I personally don't want to linger on them because I prefer the new sprites way more AND I cannot hope to future-proof the art assets to keep up with what will be done in-game. ^^