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Ever since Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was announced about two weeks ago, the fighting game community has been ablaze with discussion about Arc System Works’ upcoming Marvel fighter and what it might bring with it.
We’ve seen a lot of team-based fighting games throughout the years, though they’d usually be in either 3v3 or 2v2 format, but Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is the much more rarely seen 4v4 fighter. Given the vast universe of Marvel Comics, I wanted to have a look at some of Marvel’s bigger teams that would be really fun to group together specifically for the 4v4 format the game will have.
Before even delving into my picks below, it’s worth noting that the most famous Marvel teams, the Avengers and the X-Men, are so likely to be possible team combinations in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls already that I won’t even mention them.
In fact, for The Avengers you can already make a team of actual Avengers with the currently announced roster. Captain America and Iron Man are obvious, but although they’re not usually billed as such, Spider-Man and Storm have also been part of the Avengers roster, so there’s already a set Avengers team right off the bat.
As for the X-Men, given that Marvel no longer have any rights issues holding them back from promoting whatever characters they want, it’s highly unlikely we’ll see another Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite situation and especially given that Marvel have a vested interest in pushing the X-Men, there will likely be many of them in the game.
I already wrote a piece earlier discussing what the likely criteria are going to be for characters’ inclusion in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, which you can check out here.
The general gist is that the focus will likely be placed on characters Marvel are currently looking to promote for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, characters that are popular in Japan specifically and moveset potential. Now, on to some team setups I’d love to see for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls.
I already wrote a long piece lamenting the fact that the Fantastic Four were never made playable throughout the Marvel vs. Capcom series, despite developers intending to have them several times.
Although Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls appears to be quite different from Marvel vs. Capcom, it’s definitely high time for the Fantastic Four to be part of the game and the fact that it’s a game centered specifically around 4v4 battles, it just couldn’t be more perfect.
Adding to that, the Fantastic Four have a movie coming up this summer which is meant to start their inclusion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole and it’s basically a grand slam already. They’re a perfect fit and the stars have aligned.
So, what about moveset potential? Honestly, they’re some very solid picks in that regard too. Both Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman have such variation in their powers that you could basically stretch (get it?) any level of move set out of them and still have it make sense.
While it does hurt Mr. Fantastic’s chances a bit that Miss Marvel is already in the game with a similar powerset, I think the fact that Mr. Fantastic is also presented as the smartest man in the Marvel Universe and invents a lot of different tech and gadgets could easily make him entirely different from her even with stretching as both of their main gimmick.
The Human Torch has fire powers and flight and while those two things specifically may not be the most unique, there’s so much source material for the Fantastic Four that finding creative uses of Johnny’s flames isn’t going to be difficult. Recently in the comics, he’s even started making a flame double of himself he dubs Flame-O, so the possibilities are vast.
Probably the most generic one from a moveset potential standpoint is The Thing since his identity is largely that he’s a big guy and punches things, but looking at the eight characters revealed so far, we don’t really have any powerhouses like that so I think there’s definitely room for him at this point.
Even if they were to include The Hulk (likely) you can definitely differentiate the two from each other despite both being big guys who punch.
The fact that they never got their chances in fighting games before, that they’re easily the most famous four-person team Marvel has and that they’re ripe for cross-promotion at the moment makes me think that the Fantastic Four just have to be in this game.
If Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls ends up having some kind of team-up supers or abilities based on specific partners, like Marvel’s the recently released hit game Marvel Rivals does, then they’re also perfect picks for it since they basically always fight together and have tons of instances of creative teamups with their powers.
Speaking of Marvel Rivals, it doesn’t hurt that the Fantastic Four’s recent inclusion in that game proved to be exceptionally popular, either.
Probably the standout success from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Guardians of the Galaxy truly went from being one of Marvel’s least known properties to basically being A-listers overnight.
With a full movie trilogy dedicated to their team, their own big budget game and now occupying several roster slots in any Marvel crossover game (including the aforementioned Marvel Rivals), the Guardians of the Galaxy have become the representatives of the cosmic side of the Marvel universe in the last decade.
The team as most people know it was actually fairly recently established even in the comics, being formed in 2008 in the aftermath of Marvel Comics’ large-scale crossover event Annihilation (definite recommend if you haven’t read it, by the way.)
Since we’ve already seen Star-Lord included for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, it’s hard to imagine that there won’t be a few more members of the Guardians of the Galaxy trickling in.
This is actually a situation where looking at Marvel Rivals might give us a few hints on who will be included — not from who’s in that game, but rather by looking at who isn’t.
In Marvel Rivals, besides Star-Lord himself the game also has Groot, Rocket Raccoon, Mantis and Adam Warlock playable, which leads me to believe that the chances for Gamora and Drax, who were left out of Rivals, are actually very high for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls.
Worth noting is that both Rocket Raccoon and Gamora have previous fighting game appearances with the former being in both Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite while the latter only appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.
It’s unclear how inclined Arc System Works are to avoid characters that Capcom already used in their Marvel vs. Capcom titles.
The ones we’ve seen so far (Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Storm and Dr. Doom) are picks that are too big to ignore after all — so the next character reveals will likely give us a clearer picture for where they stand on this issue.
Oh, and before anyone tells me Ghost Rider fits the bill for this too… Robbie Reyes, who is in Marvel Tokon, is an entirely different character and uses a car instead of a bike, so I think it’s fair to say that he’s beyond overlap with the Johnny Blaze iteration that Capcom used in their games.
Whatever the case, it’s highly likely that we’ll be able to form a full Guardians of the Galaxy team in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls when it releases next year, and I think we’re all very thankful for it.
If you’re mostly a fan from the movies or TV shows, you may wonder why I’m not calling this section “The Defenders”, but to be frank… The Defenders usually weren’t street level heroes, with the original team members being The Hulk, Namor, Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer (you can find my writings on Namor and the Silver Surfer at these links, by the way.)
So while there’s no official team designation for what I’m looking for here, the general gist of it is heroes who are more likely to be trying to save their neighborhood rather than be out saving the universe.
There’s a lot of different heroes that fit the bill here, and one of the main ones (who actually does go around saving the universe sometimes) is already in the game — Spider-Man.
My personal ideal quartet of street-level heroes to put together in a team alongside Spidey would be Daredevil, Moon Knight and Luke Cage for a solid variety of skillsets and, uh, sanity.
Part of it is also that all three of those have unfortunately missed out on fighting games in the past (you can find my cases for Daredevil and Moon Knight at these links.)
That said, there’s tons of other characters that wouldn’t be out of place for such a team up, including Iron Fist, Jessica Jones or even The Punisher (who I also made a case for in the past.)
This is definitely the most vague category and like I said, it’s not necessarily based on a specific team. But being able to match together characters that you’d likely see fighting crime together in the source material would just be great.
Okay, I know they’re called the Sinister Six and this is a 4v4 game, but come on, this is just too good to pass up!
Spider-Man stands as Marvel Comics’ most popular character and he’s been solidly locked in that role basically since his debut back in 1962 and while there are many different reasons for his popularity, his iconic rogues’ gallery is definitely one of the bigger ones.
Early on in the comics, a few of Spider-Man’s foes realized that while they were never able to beat him on their own, they could put their heads (or fists) together and team up to take him down.
The nifty part about this as a potential quartet is that honestly, almost any Spider-Man villain fits the bill here, because his villains have formed various iterations of the Sinister Six (even the Sinister Twelve at one point — yikes) so many times that basically everyone’s been a part of it at some point or another.
Even Venom, perhaps Spider-Man’s most popular villain, has actually been part of the group a few times.
Originally, though, the group was founded with Dr. Octopus as the brains behind the operation (who was almost playable in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, by the way) who enlisted the help of Electro, Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, Sandman and the Vulture to take Spider-Man down once and for all.
Basically any other Spider-Man villain has been part at one point or another, so characters like Scorpion, the Rhino, Lizard or Hobgoblin would all be fair game to include and still have it be a proper Sinister Six lineup.
Given that Spider-Man is the most popular character that Marvel has, the fact that previous fighting games have been woefully light on Spider-Man villains and that Spider-Man is particularly popular in Japan specifically, I really do think that making a Sinister Six (well, Four) is a realistic possibility for Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls.
If that were the case, what would your ideal Sinister Four lineup be? I’d personally have to go with Dr. Octopus, Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter and Hobgoblin.
Are there any other particular teams you’d like to see made possible in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls? Let us know in the comments what your hopes are.
“}]] Ever since Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was announced about two weeks ago, the fighting game community has been ablaze with discussion about Arc System Works’ upcoming Marvel fighter and what it might bring with it.We’ve seen a lot … Read More