STACK #262 August 2026

FEATURE GAMING

that there are always new things to discover and experience. Players are free to play however they want, but I feel they’ll eventually grow tired of the same thing over and over. I want to make sure they have the option to search for new discoveries for themselves to do different things, rather than a rote gameplay experience. There’s a lot of depth to fighting games as a genre, with new

How do you go about tuning the enemy AI for challenging but fair play in single player bouts? TY: Not only do we have playtesting in-house, but we've also been working closely with PlayStation’s specialised research team and external partners to help us obtain feedback. From all these contributions, we balanced the game so that the difficulty feels satisfying for a wide array of players ranging from casual to seasoned fighting game veterans.

discoveries coming up the more you play. In Tōkon , each team shares a single health bar, meaning players can start out controlling one character and then move on to learning the next character after they get used to it or grow tired of that character. Each individual character offers a lot to learn,

DYK?

Kazuto Sekine is nicknamed Pachi and is legendary in the Japanese fighting game community. Before he designed games,

KS: We adjusted the starting difficulty so it could be beaten

by most players. However, there is a large spectrum of skill levels among fighting game players, so we had multiple difficulty levels made to cater to each skill level.

he was a top-level competitive fighting game player.

making the gameplay experience already rewarding even when just playing as one character. One thing I feel can cause people to shy away from fighting games is the idea that they must be played as a hardcore competitive game against other people, but that isn’t the case. We’ve included a lot of single player content, such as Episode Mode and Challenge Mode, so players can enjoy other content as well and learn about the world and characters. Did the previous Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games have any influence? TY: More than a few select works, we drew inspiration from a very wide array of movies, anime, and manga, and proceeded with development while paying respect and homage to them. KS : Marvel has a long history with many great games. We moved forward with this project having a lot of respect for these, while searching for ways to bring something unique that could only be done by Arc System Works.

What do you most hope that players – both Marvel fans and lovers of your brand of fighting games - will take away from their time with Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls ? KS: We really wanted to show a new Marvel world building vision, and have people excited about it. We poured a lot of care and love into the Episode Mode, character poses, animations, lobby avatars, backgrounds, and so much more, so we really hope players will enjoy it. Also, we really had a lot of fun making this game, putting Easter eggs here and there for Marvel fans to spot, and of course we’d be happy if fighting game veterans enjoyed those too. We intend to make this game evolve along with its player base, so I’m looking forward to seeing what we can build together! TY: For all players, we hope this game will bring something good to your life, as small as it may be, which would be our utmost joy – and was the main motivator for us to develop it.

23