Marvel is releasing "Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls" on 6 August for PlayStation 5 and Windows, its latest push into 2D fighting games, alongside a tie-in comic one-shot. The launch matters as it offers fans a comic-book crossover event ahead of Marvel's much bigger cinematic one, December's "Avengers: Doomsday," giving gamers an early taste of large-scale character team-ups from across the Marvel universe.

Developed by Arc System Works, the studio behind Guilty Gear and Dragon Ball FighterZ, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the game features 20 characters split into five teams — the Fighting Avengers, Unbreakable X-Men, The Amazing Guardians, The Knights of Doom and Samurai Outriders — competing in 4v4 tag-team battles. The plot follows the teams as they qualify to face The Champion, a villainous Elder of the Universe threatening Earth, with an accompanying anthology comic, "Marvel Tōkon: First Strike," released on 5 August to expand the backstory ahead of the game's launch.