How to unlock every character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 3 ways

• You can unlock nearly every character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in three ways.
• Before you can fully unlock a character, you'll need to defeat them in a one-on-one battle.
• The only way to unlock Smash Ultimate's DLC characters, like Sora or Banjo & Kazooie, is by purchasing them.
• Visit Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories.

Before release, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's slogan was "Everyone is here." And if you look at the final roster, that promise has come true: The game features 89 playable characters, representing 43 distinct game series. And that's not even counting the stages, Mii Costumes, Assist Trophies, Spirits, and music tracks.

But when you first boot the game, you'll have access to only eight characters. To unlock the rest, you'll need to start fighting — or pull out your wallet.

There are three ways to unlock most characters in Smash Ultimate, and a fourth way to unlock the DLC fighters. Here's how Smash Ultimate's unlock system works, and how to find your favorite characters as fast as possible.

How to unlock characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

No matter which method you choose here, you'll have to fight each character one-on-one to fully unlock them. These unlock matches will start out easy, but become increasingly difficult as time goes on. Don't be surprised if some later characters knock you out on your first try.

Unlocking in VS. Mode

VS. Mode — also called just Smash Mode — is the game's primary and most basic game mode. It's the one that lets you quickly set up a match between any two characters on any stage, with any ruleset. And if you're like most players, it's probably the mode you'll be unlocking most fighters in.

In past Smash Bros. games, you could unlock characters by playing a specific number of matches, or leaving the game on for a set amount of time. That doesn't work in Ultimate — instead, the game tracks how active you are when fighting, and how many moves you make. The more inputs you perform, the faster new characters will arrive.

This counts for multiplayer matches, too! Fighting with two human players will unlock characters faster than one player, and four players even faster than that.

So to unlock new characters in VS. Mode, just play normally. It should only take five to ten minutes of normal gameplay to spawn your first challenger. And once an unlockable fighter appears, the "input counter" will go on cooldown and it'll take another five to ten minutes for another fighter to show up.

Unlocking in Classic Mode

Classic Mode, which you can find by selecting Games & More from the game's main menu, is a mode that puts your character through a gauntlet of fights and challenges. The fights change depending on your character, meaning that there are 86 unique Classic Mode routes (the three Mii Fighters are excluded).

Whenever you complete a Classic Mode route, it'll trigger a fight against a character you haven't unlocked yet. Win that fight, and you'll unlock the character permanently.

Just like in VS. Mode, the order in which they appear isn't random. But here, which character appears will depend on who you're playing as.

Every character has a list of other characters that will appear when you use them to beat Classic Mode. So for example, beating Classic Mode as Mario will unlock Sonic. Beating it again as Mario will unlock Bayonetta, and then Little Mac, and so on.

And if you beat Classic Mode with one of the characters that you unlocked, it'll unlock other characters in the list that they came from.

Check out this chart for the full details:

Once you've completed a character's entire list, beating Classic Mode with them will start unlocking characters from other lists.

Unlocking in World of Light

Smash Ultimate's story mode, World of Light, is the last way to unlock the base roster characters. World of Light takes place after the Smash Bros. universe is ruined by a cosmic entity called Galeem, and almost every character in the game has been sealed away.

As you progress through World of Light, you'll occasionally encounter the characters that Galeem took control of. Winning these fights will unlock the characters not only in World of Light, but in the rest of the game too.

And unlike in VS. and Classic Mode, you can infinitely rematch any of the characters until you beat them.

The downside is that World of Light can take a long time to get through. A normal playthrough will last about 20 to 30 hours, and you can't unlock every character until at least the last section.

A full map of where to find each and every character in World of Light would be a bit too extensive for this article, but here's a list of which characters you'll find in each section.

How to unlock DLC characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

When Super Smash Bros. Ultimate released in 2018, the game had 77 characters. But since then, Nintendo has added 12 new fighters as paid downloadable content.

Unlike the original characters, you can't unlock these DLC fighters by just playing the game. Instead you'll need to purchase them from the Nintendo eShop, either individually or as a "Fighters Pass" bundle. 

The first DLC character, Piranha Plant, can only be downloaded by itself. The first Fighters Pass bundle includes Joker, Hero, Banjo & Kazooie, Terry Bogard, and Byleth. Fighters Pass Vol. 2 includes Min Min, Steve & Alex, Sephiroth, Pyra & Mythra, Kazuya Mishima, and Sora.

Each character costs $5.99 by themselves, with the exception of Piranha Plant, who's $4.99. The first Fighters Pass costs $24.99, and Fighters Pass Vol. 2 costs $29.99.

Once you buy a character, they'll be fully unlocked for every mode in the game, including World of Light. There's no one-on-one fight required.