Even before Marvel became the pop culture juggernaut it is today, its iconic superheroes have had a strong lineage in games. Most notable were the fighting games made by Capcom from the 90s, initially with 1994's X-Men: Children of the Atom before crossing over with the publisher's own game characters, giving us the beloved Marvel vs Capcom series.
It's then a huge surprise to see that pattern disrupted with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, an upcoming tag fighter that's not only being published by Sony in partnership with Marvel Games but being developed by Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball FighterZ studio Arc System Works.
Last year's Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection might have been a great exercise in nostalgia but the result of the last entry in this licensed franchise was a low point. 2017's Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite was an ill-fated attempt to have a more realistic art direction based on the all-encompassing influence of the MCU.
Not helped by presumably film rights issues that saw the glaring omission of X-Men and Fantastic Four characters, that game's character models felt so bland and charmless compared to the Saturday morning cartoon-inspired sprites of the older games, or even the stylised cel-shaded rendering in Marvel vs Capcom 3.
Tokon then feels like a major course correction in the hands of a veteran studio whose anime fighters already leverage Unreal for unique stylised results. Play or watch a match of Guilty Gear Strive or Dragon Ball FighterZ and you'd swear you're watching a hand-drawn anime until during a killer super move sequence the camera swings around and you realise these are actually 3D models rendered and animated with less frames to keep the feel of traditional 2D animation.
Tokon actually doesn't stick to this style as its superheroes jump, dash, punch and smash across a stage at a silky smooth 60fps, with the occasional dramatic pause. But similar to the stunning Marvel Rivals, this is another terrific example of taking a popular piece of Western media and giving it a cultural twist.
There's the interesting choice to so far only cast the characters' voice lines in Japanese, which are also delivered in the same over-the-top energy as a Shonen anime. But you can also see the anime influence come through in character designs, such as Iron Man's suit looking a lot more like a mech, while Ms Marvel's cute, big-eye, high-energy is quite the contrast to her more down-to-earth depiction in Square Enix's Marvel Avengers.
Even though the latest demo had just eight playable characters, it's already showing greater diversity than Infinite, including newcomers that haven't been in a Marvel fighting game before.
It's also here just as more tag fighters are on the rise, with 2XKO, featuring characters from the League of Legends universe, just recently having its early access launch, while Invincible Vs, based on Robert Kirkman's comic books, was also announced this summer.
But Tokon doesn't just have the Marvel brand behind it but also bigger numbers in that your team is made up of four fighters. It's a daunting number but managed by a system where you actually only start off with just one hero and gradually assemble the others during a first-to-three match.
A show of unity is also tied around your heroes all sharing a single health bar, meaning you can technically just stick to one character and keep the others for assists, but it's also quicker rounds as you're not tagging out heroes at the last second if their health is getting dangerously low.
There's just such chaotic spectacle as a combo-ending move or special smashes your opponent across the screen to another part of the stage, while it's easy to mash out assist combos that see your allies jumping in one after the other, or executing a super that also brings up large fonts and comic book panels for effect.
As cool as it all looks, I do have some reservations over the current roster all sharing the same command inputs, your forward and backward quarter-circles, your Shoryuken zig-zagging, and double-downing.
As someone who mains Chun-Li in Street Fighter, I'm conscious of the lack of more variety, like charging or half-circles. At least you don't have to choose between a classic or simplified control scheme, but instead have access to Smash-style controls where you'll have simple specials by tapping the quick skill button in neutral or with a direction, or you can opt for command inputs to deal bonus damage.
There's still some interesting distinctions unique to characters. For example, Ghost Rider comes with an additional gauge that works a bit like Street Fighter 6 and Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves' where you can risk overheating, while one of Spider-man's coolest moves where his Spidey senses are tingling isn't a move by itself but when timed right gives him a contextual dodge and counter animation.
Personally, I was most fond of Ms Marvel, whose stretchy limbs and a spinning lariat make her a strange combination of Dhalsim and Zangief. But then she was a favourite amongst other fans queuing to play the demo too, so given you have to pick four characters from a current roster of eight, it was all too easy to get into mirror matches, where I then also lose sight of my character on the busy screen.
Hopefully, the base game will have a large enough roster to prevent this kind of repetition, because after going back to throw down all weekend (and collecting some sweet chibi pin badges that were also being given away) Tokon is definitely one of the games I'm most excited for in 2026.
For more upcoming games, see my features on There Are No Ghosts at the Grand and Neverway
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