Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls release date estimate, closed beta, and more

What is the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls release date? Arguably the biggest surprise of Sony’s summer State of Play, Arc System Works stunned the fighting game community with a seismic announcement. There’s a new fighting game on the horizon, and it’s ready to take the crown as the premier tag-team fighter.

This heavyweight collaboration has brought together Arc System Works, Marvel Games, and PlayStation Studios to create Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls, a 4v4 tag-team fighting game starring the biggest superheroes from the Marvel universe. Ahead of the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls release date, we’ll take a look at what you can expect from the gameplay, as well as the potential roster, and so much more.

Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls release date estimate

The Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls release date is scheduled for sometime in 2026 and will launch on PC and PlayStation 5. With a closed beta on the way, we believe there’s a strong chance that the game will be ready before the Evolution Fighting Championship tournament in Q2 2026.

As of 2021, Sony Interactive Entertainment co-owns the Evo brand, so it’ll want this game to be there as one of the main events, making its launch before the tournament highly likely. The Evo usually takes place between July and August, though the dates for Evo 2026 have yet to be officially announced. Speaking at Evo 2025, Arc System Works producer Takeshi Yamanaka confirmed that the team plans to support the game for ten years.

We don’t know how long the game has been in development, but it appears to be in a healthy state, judging by what we’ve seen from the gameplay. Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls is a PlayStation 5 console exclusive, skipping the Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. On PC, it’s going to launch on both Steam and the Epic Games Store. The Steam page also confirms that the game will support crossplay between PC and PlayStation 5.

Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls closed beta

You can get your hands on Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls by participating in the closed beta, set to take place from September 5 – 7. Head to the PlayStation website to register for a chance to play the game ahead of its launch date. If you are selected, you will receive an invitation via email, so keep an eye peeled on your inbox.

The closed beta will be exclusive to the PlayStation 5 (sorry, PC players) and will feature rollback netcode, spectator mode, and limited offline matches. Though the game has eight confirmed characters, only six of them will be playable, with Spider-Man and Ghost Rider missing the cut.

Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls gameplay

On July 31, the developers released a Beginner’s Guide video detailing all the mechanics in the game. Matches are broken down into best-of-five rounds, and teams will have one shared health bar. Each match is broken down into phases, with the first phase being restricted to 2v2 until players start to deal some damage.

You can increase the number of fighters you have during the fight by performing a special throw or using specific attacks to trigger a stage transition. Any fighters you unlock during the match stay with you throughout subsequent rounds, with the final phase of the fight taking place when both players have their entire team unlocked.

At the top of the screen is the Assemble Gauge, displaying the number of assists you have available. There’s also a Skill Gauge at the bottom, required to use your skill attacks. EX Skills require you to spend 25 Skill Gauge, and they can be quickly performed by using the Quick Skill button. However, if you perform the skill using the command input, it will deal slightly more damage. Super Skills cost 50 Skill Gauge, and Ultimate Skills cost 100.

Players can utilize Link Attacks, a series of attacks performed by pressing the light, medium, or heavy attack buttons consecutively. These combos can be altered by ending with certain buttons to end the combo with a different attack. For example, you can start a light Link Attack chain but end it with a heavy attack to finish your combo with an Ultimate Skill.

In the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls behind-the-scenes video, the developers from Arc talk about how there’s already a legacy surrounding Marvel fighting games, which is why it needed to do something different. The team settled on a 4v4 fighter, evolving on the usual tag-team format by introducing an additional character. As a result, things can get hectic during fights, with up to eight characters appearing on the screen depending on how players decide to use their assists.

This certainly sounds intimidating at first; after all, learning how to play as four unique characters is quite a lot to ask from the average player. Fortunately, there’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to utilizing your team. You have the option to use one point character, leaving the rest of your team to provide assist attacks, or you can tag in each fighter as you see fit, giving you an advantage in specific match-ups.

It’s unclear how this will be balanced, as it sounds like players who take the time to learn all four of their characters will have the upper hand in fights. While there shouldn’t be any particularly bad match-ups due to the sheer number of assists on offer, your odds will improve by swapping to a fighter who has a better chance of taking the opponent down. This could be balanced by making teams with locked assists have a stronger point character with more health and increased damage, but we’ll have to see how the developers choose to tackle this down the line.

Similarly to Dragon Ball FighterZ and Guilty Gear Strive, Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls will feature traditional and simplified inputs to ensure players of all skill levels can jump into the action right away. We also know that each character has a “bespoke set of normal, special, and unique attacks inspired by their abilities and powers in Marvel lore”, as mentioned on the PlayStation blog. There are some iconic moves that we’ve seen in past Marvel fighting games that have snuck their way into this fighter, including Iron Man’s Unibeam,

Assessing the gameplay we’ve seen so far, there are plenty of mechanics that we recognize from other fighting games in use here. Aerial combat will be a big part of Marvel Tokon, with each character having access to a launcher to send their opponent flying through the air. We’ve also seen air dashes, active tags to switch to different fighters, and assists to help you create openings during combat.

Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls characters

As this is a 4v4 fighting game, we’re expecting to see a lot of Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls characters end up on the final roster. Given Marvel’s large library of comics to pick from, there are hundreds of fighters Arc could potentially pick from.

Here are all the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls characters revealed so far:

• Captain America
• Iron Man
• Spider-Man
• Storm
• Ms. Marvel
• Ghost Rider
• Dr. Doom
• Star-Lord

According to Takeshi Yamanaka, producer at Arc, Marvel initially rejected the team’s initial character designs, asking them to “Show us the Marvel that you [Arc] want to create.” The designs of the characters have been transformed by Arc to give them a distinct look, with the best example of this being Iron Man who has been given a Gundam-esque makeover.

Yamanaka stated the developers have specific criteria for which characters could end up in the game. “First and foremost, we wanted to include characters who we feel to be the ‘face’ of Marvel,” said Yamanaka. “At the same time, we also needed to select characters that would give us a balance of battle types and styles. Lastly, we wanted to sprinkle in a few surprises and leave room for characters who have never been playable in a fighting game before.”

When you take a look at who the current faces of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are, like the Avengers, Thunderbolts, and the Fantastic Four, we’ll certainly see characters from these franchises make their way to the game as playable fighters.

Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls stages

The stage transition mechanic from Guilty Gear Strive is coming to Marvel Tokon, shown in the gameplay where Spider-Man is seen kicking Ms. Marvel into a different part of the stage. Of all the backgrounds we’ve taken a look at, it seems they’re all part of one big level—Marvel’s version of New York City.

There are many easter eggs on the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls stages we’ve seen so far, some of which may give us a glimpse into who we can expect to see on the roster. On the main part of the New York stage, we can see the Avengers Tower in the background, as well as a billboard with J. Jonah Jameson’s face on it. Next to the Avengers Tower is the Baxter Building, home to the Fantastic Four.

The backdrop of the right part of the stage shows a statue of the Avengers, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. On the left side, we get a glimpse of a side street that has become overrun by what looks to be Shuma-Gorath’s giant tentacles, with armored soldiers standing in the background. We can also see Fogwell’s Gym, which may suggest that Daredevil could be part of the game.

That’s all we know about the Marvel Tokon Fighting Souls release date so far, but stay tuned as we’re ready to update this guide whenever more information becomes available. In the meantime, be sure to check out our list of the best multiplayer games to find competitive experiences like this one. We also have a list of upcoming games so you can find out what else is set to launch in 2026 and beyond.