Unlockable character

An unlockable character or secret character is a character that is not available at the start of the game (unlike a starter character), but instead must be unlocked.

A unique criteria must be met in order to unlock a certain character, as outlined below. Once the player has met this criteria in-game, a message will display; in all cases, the player is given this screen after completely finishing gameplay.

"Warning! Challenger Approaching!" screen


In all games, the text "Warning! Challenger Approaching!" is shown prior to fighting the character. All the games have different screens.

The original game had the character merely displayed in a blue box in front of a black background, with a exclamation point in a red circle on the top of the screen, the the phrase "Challenger Approaching" next to it. The original game also uses the same music as the 1P-Game's intro. Melee added the phrase "A new foe has appeared!", and as a first, a silhouette of the character the player is about to face is also provided, instead of a full image. The game also added animations to the screens, with an undulating matrix effect in the background, while the exclamation point, text and silhouette would be eased in. Original music was also provided solely for the screen, which took the sound of a slow, ominous siren. Brawl returned to the plain black background, but still had animations that would ease in, and when the player pressed any button, the images would fade to black, while the "Challenger Approaching!" text would scatter all over the screen; the siren is also considerably faster and more panicky in its sound than how it sounds in Melee. Tourney has the same screen that Brawl had, but it would appear after many white lines strike the scene at an uncontrollable speed, similar to the Supernova attack from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, as well as the announcer shouting "Warning!" when this happens. Also in Tourney, the announcer now says the phrase "A new foe has appeared!" on the "Warning!.

After the "Challenger Approaching!" screen, the unlockable character will then be fought with the player having two stock and the unlockable character having one stock during the match with no time limit, on a pre-determined stage and pre-determined music. The player uses the last character played as, as well as the same color swap; in the case of multiplayer battles, the player who won the match will fight the challenger. If a CPU won the match, then the player is not given the option to fight.

By defeating the opponent, the character becomes playable. If the player fails, however, they will not unlock the character, but you can meet with the challenger again by going to the Vault menu and by selecting "Challenger Rematch".

Characters

 * Azazel will automatically be unlocked when you clear Classic-Adventure Mode.