Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: How To Unlock Every Character Fast

There are 68 unlockable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — basically, a huge swathe of the main roster is unavailable to you right from the start. You can unlock them in the new singleplayer mode, World of Light, but that’s going to take a very long time. If you just want to use every character and play with your friends, or if you’ve got a favorite and want to speed up the process, this method might just be for you.

The extra characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are locked behind a time gate. The more you play, the more often you’ll encounter character unlocks. At certain intervals, you’ll face a challenger — a new character — and if you beat them, you’ll unlock that character for your roster. If you don’t beat them, you’ll have to fight them in a rematch later. It isn’t as complicated as it sounds.

More Super Smash Bros. Ultimate guides on Gameranx:

How To Unlock Every Character Fast | All Challengers Guide

NOTE: Like many Nintendo games, the characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate are time-gated — normally, a new challenger will appear every 10 minutes or so. Here, we’re going to manipulate the time-gating to speed up the process and unlock characters faster than usual.

There are two ways to unlock characters — unlock them in the World of Light Adventure Mode, or by playing matches. When playing matches with friends, you’ll sometimes get a message after a fight, stating that “A New Foe Appears!” — the (seemingly) random character will challenge you to a one-on-one fight. If you beat them, you’ll unlock that character.

How To Speed Up Character Unlocks:
1. Play through a complete 10-minute match against AI. You should only need to do this once.
  - You may need to complete a Classic Mode session. A Random Foe will appear after every completion.
2. A Random Foe Appears! Fight them — it doesn’t matter if you win or lose.
  - You’ll be able to re-match any failed new character battles in the future.
3. Exit back to the Home Menu and restart the game.
  - IMPORTANT: The time in the upper-right corner must be different. Wait ONE MINUTE — when the clock changes, you can re-enter the game.
4. Start a new Smash Match and change the Ruleset to 1 Stock.
5. Enter the match and ring yourself out.
  - You don’t need to win for the new character to appear.
6. A New Foe Appears! — A random challenger will appear after the match.
7. After the unlockable character match is over, restart and repeat the process.
  - Remember, wait ONE MINUTE after exiting to the Home Screen and restarting.

It’s worth noting that unlocking characters through this method will NOT unlock them in the World of Light. If you unlock a character in World of Light, they’re made available everywhere. If you unlock them only through this method, they will not appear in World of Light — you’ll still have to unlock them in that mode, which will take many, many hours to complete.

If you lose the character unlock match, don’t worry! You’ll unlock a rematch. Once you’ve fought (and lost) several times, a door icon called the “Challenger’s Approach” will appear. From here, you’ll be able to rematch unlockable characters in the order they appear for you.