It feels like this game is getting more hype than it probably deserves to.

Theory 1: it's this game's "promotional characters" as Nick also has a TMNT game coming out this year that's based on the 80s series (as its a throwback to the TMNT games Konami used to make back then).
Theory 2: They're already including a good number of 90s and 00s era characters, why not throw in some 80s characters to really attract the 30 and up crowd too?