People spend hours on how to unlock characters in smash playing more when the unlock does not care about play time at all.
Treat the numbers as a guideline; your exact result depends on your setup and current version. Progress made before starting the relevant quest sometimes does not count, which catches people out. Where difficulty is part of the requirement, it is stated explicitly rather than implied. Whether the unlock behind how to unlock characters in smash can be missed permanently is worth settling before you go any further.
Short version
The unlock fires on a specific condition rather than on progress in general, so aim directly at that condition instead of playing more.
Is it worth the effort
The game usually confirms this in a menu you have no reason to open. The official documentation is right more often than forum consensus, though it is rarely as clear. Where a counter exists but is hidden, doing the condition in one session removes all ambiguity.
The approach below has been checked against the current version rather than a patch from two years ago. Check the collection screen rather than your inventory to confirm it registered. Doing the condition twice never helps, though plenty of guides imply otherwise.
Whether it can be missed permanently
Where two conditions exist, the game often only tells you about the easier one. The confirmation for how to unlock characters in smash appears somewhere most people never open. It helps to know why a step exists, because then you can adapt it when your situation differs slightly.
Unlocks that depend on a hidden counter are the ones that generate the most bad advice. Community spreadsheets are more reliable than forum threads for this specific kind of question. Most advice on this topic assumes you already know half the answer, which is exactly the problem.
If the unlock does not appear
The obvious approach works; the rest of this page is about making it work the first time. The fastest route is usually a fresh, focused run rather than continuing an existing one. If the unlock is seasonal, the deadline matters more than the method.
A requirement described as cumulative usually is, which means partial progress is not lost between sessions. The confirmation is easy to miss if it appears during a loading screen.
What it changes once you have it
Advice on how to unlock characters in smash is unusually unreliable because the requirement changed at some point. The interface rarely distinguishes between not unlocked and not yet displayed, and those are different problems. Rushing the setup is the single most reliable way to spend longer overall.
The difference between a smooth run and a frustrating one usually comes down to preparation, not skill. Most reports of how to unlock characters in smash not working turn out to be the check not having run yet. Unlocks tied to story progress cannot be rushed, and trying is the most common wasted effort here.
- Do it before any point of no return in the story.
- Do the boring preparation step, even when it looks skippable.
- Check whether an achievement tracks the same thing.
- Sync or reload the cloud save before concluding it did not work.
Where people usually trip up
- Following two guides simultaneously and ending up with neither method intact.
- Repeating the requirement several times when once was enough.
- Assuming a partial counter resets between sessions and starting over unnecessarily.
- Doing the condition after a point of no return that locked it off.
- Assuming that what worked on someone else's platform transfers unchanged to yours.
Questions people also ask
Do I need to finish the story first?
No, though a few things are simpler afterwards. Where progression matters, the relevant step says so.
Is there any risk to my save?
Not from the steps above. Backing up first is still sensible if the game makes it easy, purely because it costs nothing.
Can I do this with a friend?
Yes, and it is often easier. Agree on who does what before starting, because improvising halfway is where co-op attempts fall apart.
Does difficulty affect this unlock?
In most cases no. Difficulty changes rewards more often than it changes unlock conditions.
Work through it once properly and how to unlock characters in smash stops being something you need to look up.