Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has 66 playable fighters to unlock. Of all the ways you can do this, there\u2019s one method that\u2019ll save you many hours and let you get the full 74-character roster much faster.<\/b>
\nSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate offers a lot out of the box. All 103 stages and over 700 music tracks are available from the moment you turn on the game. What isn\u2019t available at the start, however \u2014 and this is a big one \u2014 is every fighter. While the full roster includes 74 playable characters at launch (76 if you count Pok\u00e9mon Trainer\u2019s three Pok\u00e9mon separately), only eight are unlocked from the get-go. So many worlds to play in, so few combatants.
There are myriad ways to unlock fighters \u2014 the single unifying gist is that the more you play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in any mode, the more characters you unlock \u2014 but there is one method that is much faster than others, though it requires you to spend a bit more time in the Nintendo Switch\u2019s menus.
When you first boot up Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, your roster includes eight of the 12 playable fighters from the original Nintendo 64 game: Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox and Pikachu. (Ness, Luigi, Jigglypuff and Captain Falcon are part of the group of 66 that needs to be unlocked.)
Each of the eight characters starts with eight different costumes. Some of those are simple palette swaps, while others are a bit more involved \u2014 Mario, for example, has his wedding suit from Super Mario Odyssey, while Pikachu has the usual variety of headgear.
Step one is playing a few rounds of Ultimate. Simple enough, yeah? In our testing, the first unlock happens within 8-10 minutes of game time, which is time spent in matches, not menus. The game counts these times separately; to see both \u201cPlay Time\u201d and \u201cSmash Bros. Powered Time Count,\u201d from the main menu go to Vault, then Records, then Stats.
At the end of whatever match crosses the total play time into that territory, once you click through the postgame stats recap, the familiar siren sound should ring along with a silhouette of the fighter to unlock and an also-familiar line: \u201cA new foe has appeared! Challenger approaching.\u201d
Now all you need to do is beat the challenger. Don\u2019t you worry if you lose, though: There are ways to try again (more on that later).
Repeating this method means you don\u2019t have to wait an additional 10 minutes before being offered another character to unlock, which drastically cuts down the time in between. Why does this work? Our best guess is that Nintendo wanted to make sure you felt rewarded every time you booted up the game. Whatever the reasons were, 90 percent of the time, it worked every time.
Though it may seem random at first \u2014 it certainly did to us \u2014 there is an order to when you unlock characters using the playtime\/ reset method above. Note that the unlock order is different for Classic Mode (more on that later) and World of Light (based on map location and when you face the fighter), so you can use those methods to unlock certain characters earlier.
[ Important note: We have independently confirmed about 80 percent all this list and the Classic Mode list below. The remainder comes by way of the incredible Smash Bros subreddit. We are working to confirm the rest, but we also thought it important to share now as we do.]
That\u2019s definitely a long time to wait if you\u2019re a fan of Bayonetta, but thankfully the unlock order for other modes is much different.
The easiest alternate method is playing Classic Mode, which is a series of themed battles and a boss fight that should take about 10 minutes or less to complete for each character.
Every time you play through Classic Mode, you\u2019ll get a chance to unlock a character. This is also, notably, not random. The unlock lists seem to be grouped based on each of the original fighters presented:
So for example, playing through with Yoshi will unlock Lucario, then playing through again with either Yoshi or Lucario will unlock Marth, and so on. If you\u2019ve unlocked a character through other means (e.g. World of Light or via playtime), the challenger that approaches will be the next one on the list. If you get through the whole path, the game will provide a new challenger from another list.
Oh, that one\u2019s easy \u2014 just make one of each Mii Fighter (Brawler, Swordfighter, and Gunner). You can find the option under Games & More from the main menu.
No matter how well you play, accidents happen and the challenger might beat you. (I am not ashamed to say that Jigglypuff bested me multiple times.) The wording when you first lose might make you think you\u2019ll be waiting a long time \u2014 like, after-you-unlock-every-other-fighter long time \u2014 but thankfully, that\u2019s not the case.
Eventually, after a few challengers appear, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will let you know about a new option that\u2019ll pop up from time to time called the Challenger\u2019s Approach. It\u2019ll appear as a glowing door in the bottom right of the Games & More menu. Clicking it will give you a second chance to KO and unlock challengers you\u2019ve faced previously, in the same order you found them, using whatever fighter you like (i.e., you won\u2019t be restricted to the first character you won a previous match with).
We still haven\u2019t quite figured out how often the door appears \u2014 when we had one or two challengers to unlock, it seemed rare, but once that queue grew to five or six, the Challenger\u2019s Approach option seemed to pop up every single time we faced a new challenger. Our advice is to check back after every match, and before closing and reopening the game. Just in case.
Though this method worked consistently every time with our first account, we ran into a small hiccup when testing with a new profile on the same Switch: A new challenger wasn\u2019t appearing, even after we tried the close-and-reopen-and-play-a-quick-round method several times.
The fix was thankfully easy, though maybe a bit annoying: We used the 10-minute ruleset and walked away, and at the end of that match, we had a new challenger appear. We fought, we lost, re-closed and reopened the game, and voil\u00e0: The quick loop worked just fine after that.
What else will trigger the new challenger is still somewhat up for debate and has been contributed at times to all of the following: minutes played, number of human players during that time, button inputs pressed, distance traveled by character, etc.
Yes, but it can take dozens of hours this way. If you\u2019re just looking to get the full roster as quickly as possible, this is the fastest and most consistent method we\u2019ve found so far. (Some Spirit Board challenges also seemed to work, though that wasn\u2019t nearly as consistent, the challenges were overall much harder, and it ultimately felt like a longer amount of time.)
Very early in World of Light, you\u2019re offered a choice of three fighters: Marth, Sheik, or Villager. Whichever you choose will appear in multiplayer, so if those three are high on your list of to-haves, this is one of the fastest ways to unlock them.
One important note: If you decide to pursue World of Light\/Spirit Boards to unlock characters, they\u2019ll appear in the Smash mode without any additional work. But if you unlock all your characters in the game\u2019s competitive multiplayer mode, you won\u2019t automatically have access to them in World of Light. Because of that mode\u2019s narrative thread, you slowly unlock fighters as you encounter them in the overworld map \u2014 you only start with Kirby available. You could have a full roster available in Smash mode, but only a handful of characters playable in World of Light.
Using this method instead of playing 10-minute rounds means you can face a new challenger after a 10-second round (assuming you have a second human-controlled player around who doesn\u2019t mind running off the edge of the screen as soon as the round begins). With 66 fighters to unlock, the time savings start adding up pretty quickly. Even if you\u2019re playing rounds for a full minute, skipping nine minutes per unlock means saving just under 10 hours to get through the full roster.
That doesn\u2019t take into account other factors like the time to close and reopen the game (which, mercifully, is less than a minute), setting up the next match (maybe another minute), fighting the challenger (under five minutes), and possibly fighting them again later should you lose. All of which is to say, no matter how you choose to unlock characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, with 66 to unlock, it could still take many hours before you see the full lineup. But hopefully, this suggestion saves you half a day of play time.<\/p>\n