MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls has been revealed at today’s State of Play.
The upcoming 4v4 tag team fighter is being developed by fighting game legends Arc System Works, with support from PlayStation Studios and Marvel Games. The debut trailer showcases plenty of heroes and villains from all over the Marvel universe, including Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Doom, Storm, Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord, and Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes).
“From the beginning, we aimed to make MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls a title that could be enjoyed by a wide variety of players,” explains Game Director and Lead Battle Designer, Kazuto Sekine.
“Generally, a team VS fighting game requires the player to learn multiple characters, but for MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, you only need to master one character in order to play the game. We have designed the mechanics in such a way that you can perform a variety of actions with either traditional fighting game inputs or simple inputs. With the press of a few buttons, multiple characters can appear on screen to provide backup or attack together – creating a new and exciting team VS battle experience.”
Takeshi Yamanaka says that with so many exciting Marvel characters, it was difficult to choose who would be in the roster, but he did have criteria in the selection process. This includes the ‘face’ of Marvel and characters that bring battle-type balance and styles.
MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls also uses a unique shader to create a Western comic visual style, but Marvel wanted Arc System Works to do something different and lean into the studio’s strengths.
Each character has tons of attacks, including Ultimate Skills and a set of Normal, Special, and Unique attacks based on Marvel lore.
Arc is also working on reimaging what a tag team figthter is. “Team VS fighting games have a long tradition of 2v2 or 3v3 team formats, so this is something we discussed in-depth within the development team. We went back and forth many times, from thinking we might be better off making a 1v1 game or sticking to the established 3v3 format.”
The appeal of having Marvel characters battling it out in teams made the most sense.
“With these two ideas in mind, we concluded that creating a 4v4 team VS system would be the best way to not only create those over-the-top moments, but to further evolve the tag fighting genre.”
There are also many stages you can battle in, each filled with easter eggs for Marvel fans. We see some stages, including New York City in the trailer.
MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls is set to launch in 2026 on PS5 and PC.
