Aight boys, this was
tough. Right off the bat, my #1 pick for an assist was off the table, having missed the "15+ years" guideline by a
single year, and my main two picks for a Mii costume were already submitted, so I had to look for some alternatives.
I had, like, 10 picks for an AT, it was ridiculous, there were so many good ones I could use, and for the Mii, I had to sift through Nintendo's IP library to find another idea I liked. But ultimately I did it. So without further ado...
Retro Assist Trophy Submission: Alexandra Roivas from Eternal Darkness
Last game: 2002
Alex Roivas is one of the playable characters and the main protagonist in the cult classic GameCube horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Alex is a university student from Washington who travels to her family's estate after her grandfather is killed. Exploring the mansion to try and find out what happened, she comes across a secret book named the Tome of Eternal Darkness, through which she discovers a horrifying truth about the fate of the world.
What Eternal Darkness is probably most known for is the Sanity Effects - ya had a meter, and whenever you saw an undead creature, the meter would decrease, and as it decreases, the game begins to screw with you. Books suddenly flying from one bookshelf to another, the sound of footsteps following Alex even though no one else is there, and the most memorable ones are probably the hardware tricks, such as the volume changing on its own or the game actually pretending it deleted your memory card. This is more or less what her function as an assist is referencing: she appears on the stage, might blurt some line out, but after that, a tense atmosphere starts to surround the fight, and although it's nothing as crazy as the original tricks mentioned before, she differentiates herself from most other "interference"-type Assists by only affecting your opponents, thus actually
assisting you. Some of the things that can happen to them include continually raising the damage percentage on its own, shrinking or slowing down.
I think she could be cool because the general idea of the Sanity Effects is one that lends itself well to an AT function, and Eternal Darkness itself is actually pretty well-loved among Nintendo's dead IP vault: yet it took until Ultimate for the game to get any Smash representation.
Retro Mii Costume Submission: Ryota Hayami from Wave Race
Last game: 2001
Ryota Hayami is pretty much the closest there is to a face of the Wave Race series: of the three games, I think the only one he's missed out on is the original Game Boy game.
...There's not that much to say about him actually. Look, I'll be direct here: Wave Race is epic and Ryota's design is epic. And Sukapon and Sablé Prince were taken.
Oh yeah, he'd be a
Mii Brawler along with his hairstyle as a wig.