Menu icons is a possibility, but on the topic of cropping it looks like there's not going to be any anti-aliasing in the new games, which should make cropping them out perfectly a breeze. I guess a lot of sites will be having this problem, since sprites are such a big part of the handheld games that many fansites rely on them greatly, so maybe we can just wait around and see what they do!
If all else fails, we have a community here which consists of at least a few decent spriters, too!