Super Smash Bros. Ultimate gets Incineroar, Ken and Piranha Plant as new characters

Nintendo held a 40-minute Smash Bros. Ultimate presentation today, during which the company unveiled new combatants for the Switch platform fighter: Ken from Street Fighter and Incineroar from Pokémon. This brings the total to 74 playable characters straight out of the box.

Ken will be an “echo fighter” for Ryu, meaning that he’ll have a somewhat similar play style and move set — though Nintendo notes that he’ll be faster. Incineroar, meanwhile, will focus largely on grabs and throws as moves. Ken’s appearance is based on Super Street Fighter II Turbo.

Smash Bros. Ultimate is set to release on December 7th, and today marks the final Nintendo Direct showcase for the fighting game. Beyond including every single character that has ever appeared in a Smash Bros. game, some of the new characters for this entry include Isabelle (Animal Crossing), Inkling (Splatoon), Ridley (Metroid), and King K. Rool (Donkey Kong).

Also new: trophies are gone now, but something called “spirits” are taking their place. Spirits offer a wide array of power-ups based on the character in question, which can hail from all sorts of Nintendo games. Spirits can be fed, evolved, and combined into teams.

Ultimate will also include DLC, which apparently will have totally new, never-before seen characters that are unique to Smash Bros. A downloadable pass will be available for 24.99, though Nintendo has not revealed what, specifically, this offer will include.

Finally, as an early purchase bonus, Piranha Plant will be briefly available as a free playable character — though Nintendo notes that it likely won’t be available until a few months after launch. If you include this bonus character and DLC fighters, the total comes out to 80 challengers.