Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls was first revealed earlier this year, and is currently scheduled to release sometime in 2026. Developers recently announced that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls will make its playable debut at Evo 2025. With Evo 2025 only a little more than a week away, this was great news for the fighting game community and Marvel fans alike. However, developers may have unintentionally revealed more than they intended to.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls‘ announcement trailer featured eight playable characters, alongside the announcement that the tag fighter will feature a 4v4 format. No additional characters have been revealed since then, nor are they expected to be playable at Evo 2025. In fact, the current demo build expected to be playable at Evo only features six of the eight heroes that have been revealed. However, a quirk of this build may have allowed some fans to discover the size of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls‘ launch roster.
How Many Characters Will Be Playable in the Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls’ Launch Roster?
A PlayStation blog post features an image depicting the character select screen, including only the six characters that will be playable at Evo. Despite completely omitting the spaces of characters not included in the demo, this blog post does still serve as a valuable clue for speculation.
In quote retweet of PlayStation’s original post, Twitter user @realradec was the first to discover what some now believe may be the hidden size of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls‘ launch roster. By simply editing the character select screen with the help of Doctor Doom, Radec was able to surmise that there is room for approximately 35 characters on the game’s roster. That would be a pretty healthy size for a tag fighter like this one, with some players already taking the edited image as a soft confirmation.
Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls Launch Roster Speculation Explained (and Debunked?)
Unfortunately, this process is anything but scientific. For one, it’s not at all common for character select screens to include additional space for DLC fighters. It’s not unlikely that the figure of 35 characters will be closer to the game’s roster size after a first round of DLC, not at launch. Moreover, fighting game rosters are rarely neatly-defined boxes like the one seen in Radec’s edit. Finally, Radec includes an entire row of character slots at the top of the image that, while visually appealing, shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Once this row is removed, it would bring the presumed launch roster closer to 30 characters, which is by no means a bad number either. However, it seems likely that developers would want to use a number divisible by four for the sake of the game’s 4v4 battles. This leaves the likely candidates as 28 and 32. I’m a glass-half-full kind of gal, so I’ll name 32 as my personal guess.
Who Will Be Playable in the Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls Launch Roster?
As stated previously, there are currently eight known playable characters in Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls‘ launch roster. The characters revealed so far are as follows:
- Captain America
- Doctor Doom
- Ghost Rider
- Iron Man
- Ms. Marvel
- Spider-Man
- Star-Lord
- Storm
Unfortunately, Ghost Rider and Spider-Man are not featured in the build that will be available at Evo. They may simply not be in a playable state at this moment, or developers may be planning to give them the spotlight at a later date. Regardless, the makeup of the current roster does reveal some interesting details about the developers’ priorities.
Marvel Rivals ushered in a new era of massively successful Marvel games, and is therefore a good measuring stick for anyone hoping to speculate on what direction the studio is likely to take next. For example, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls includes all four members of The Fantastic Four, just like Marvel Rivals did. The X-Men are bound to receive more spotlight as well, with characters such as Wolverine and Magneto seeming like no-brainers.
If Marvel Rivals‘ free reign over comics history is any indication, one can expect Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls to not shy away from including a few deep cuts. With the Marvel Universe being as vast as it is, one might worry that Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls won’t have enough room to fit everyone. However, if recent speculation is at all credible, then fans should be in good hands with the game’s launch roster.
