Revealed as one of the final roster additions at launch, Street Fighter veteran Ken Masters joins Super Smash Bros Ultimate as an echo fighter of his longtime sparring partner and friend, Ryu. Although Ken utilizes similar moves like the hurricane kick and classic hadoken fireball, game director Masahiro Sakurai admits that Ken is not just a simple clone. Thanks to a few tweaks to existing moves and a slightly faster movement speed, Ken should feel unique enough on his own.

Street Fighter fans are going to have to grind a bit before adding him to the roster, just like every other fighter outside of the classic eight. With three different ways to unlock him, here are the best ways to turn up the heat on the competition with Ken.

Classic Mode

As fans have been discovering since Super Smash Bros Ultimate launched in early December, the most direct way to unlock particular characters is to clear the newly revamped Classic Mode with one of the classic 8 characters multiple times. While some new faces like King K. Rool are much easier to unlock, Ken is going to require a bit of grinding on the behalf of the player as they'll need to finish classic mode eight times.

The key character to use in this case is Yoshi or any of the characters previously unlocked from his path eight times. This list includes Lucario, Marth, Ryu, Ganondorf, Lucina, Ridley, or Chrom. After the boss is defeated on that eighth time through, Ken will challenge the player.

World of Light

For those who don't want to play through Classic Mode that many times, Ken can also be unlocked by playing through the single player story campaign, World of Light. Each character can be found in different parts of the map and can be unlocked by finishing certain matches. For Ken, players will need to head to Dracula's Castle in the Dark World, as his battle can be found on the lower tower balcony.

Of course, World of Light features a sprawling map and is much more time-consuming than other parts of the game. While it's possible to unlock new characters by playing this mode, it's certainly not the most efficient way to do so for players who want to quickly build out their roster.

Random Challenger

The third and final way to unlock characters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate is through playing Vs Mode. After playing a couple of matches, players will be challenged by new characters, which were initially thought to be random. After some digging by the Smash Bros subreddit, though, it was discovered that this order is also predetermined like the Classic Mode character order.

Ken is the 57th character to challenge the player, so it's going to take some time to get to him. However, as the player starts to unlock characters through various methods, the game jumps to the next character that is still locked, so it's possible for players to trigger the fighter sooner.

Regardless of the chosen path, getting to Ken and unlocking him is going to take some time for most players. Using the ten-minute timer reset trick could help speed this process along, by exiting out of the game completely after unlocking a new fighter. Instead of waiting for an additional 10 minutes, simply playing 1 or 2 matches should trigger the next challenge. Repeat the process as necessary to fill out the massive 74-character roster in much less time than normal.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is out now exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.