Sony and Arc System Works are handing everyone a free weekend with Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls. As detailed on the PlayStation Blog, the 4v4 tag fighter's open beta runs Friday, July 24th through Sunday, July 26th on PS5, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. It's completely free, with no registration required, and you don't need a PlayStation Plus subscription. Download and let the fighting begin!
The beta is a full 72-hour window. Servers go live at 12:00am PT on the 24th (that's 3:00am ET) and stay up until 11:59pm PT on Sunday night. Pre-downloads open two hours before start time, so you can have everything installed and ready before the servers wake up.
The only requirements on PS5 and PC alike are an internet connection and a PlayStation account, and Sony's supporting voice-over and text in 10 languages, with text-only support in 7 more.
Fifteen of the 20 launch-roster fighters are playable, headlined by Blade making his first playable appearance in the game, and the teams break down like this:
- Fighting Avengers - Captain America, Iron Man, Black Panther
- Unbreakable X-Men - Storm, Magik, Wolverine, Danger
- Amazing Guardians - Spider-Man, Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord, Peni Parker
- Samurai Outriders - Ghost Rider, Blade
- Knights of Doom - Doctor Doom, Magneto
Danger is the deepest cut on that list - she's the X-Mansion's Danger Room training A.I. given a body of her own, introduced by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday during their Astonishing X-Men run back in 2005. Peni Parker's a fun pick, too: the SP//dr pilot was created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way for 2014's Edge of Spider-Verse before Into the Spider-Verse made her a household name. This roster digs well past the A-list!
Blade being playable hits differently if you've followed the character's movie saga. Marvel announced a Blade reboot starring two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali back at San Diego Comic-Con in 2019, and seven years later that film has churned through writers and directors, lost its release date, and still hasn't made it in front of cameras.
The character himself has been around since 1973, when Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan introduced him in the pages of The Tomb of Dracula #10, and the 1998 Wesley Snipes film arguably kicked off the modern comic book movie boom. While the reboot sits in limbo, the Daywalker keeps finding steady work in games, and pairing him with Ghost Rider on a team called the Samurai Outriders feels like the sword-first showcase fans have been asking for.
The content list is close to a full game. Online casual and ranked matches are in, along with local versus, training mode, and the Start Up Battle tutorial for anyone new to tag fighters. Episode Mode is included as well, covering the first three chapters of the Amazing Guardians storyline starring that same quartet, and open lobbies let you hang out between matches with 16 avatars in four color variations to choose from.
Six stages made the cut: Knowhere, the Savage Land, Wakanda, the X-Mansion, and Marvel's New York in both day and night versions. Push Square's beta guide confirms crossplay between PS5 and PC, which matters more than it sounds - one shared player pool keeps queue times short for a test that only lasts three days.
The full game launches Thursday, August 6th on PS5 and PC with all 20 fighters. A free, nearly-full-roster beta this close to launch pulls double duty as a server stress test and a public show of confidence, and the timing makes sense: Marvel hasn't had a major tag fighter since 2017's Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, while Arc System Works has spent the years since turning out Dragon Ball FighterZ and Guilty Gear Strive, two of the best-playing fighting games of the past decade. A smooth weekend would turn a lot of curious fence-sitters into day-one players.
It caps a big month for Marvel on PlayStation in general. Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine just unleashed Lady Deathstrike in its newest trailer, and with Tokon arriving in August and Logan's solo outing still to come, Marvel fans with a PS5 have a stacked stretch ahead. Check out the beta's official trailer below!
Free is free, and 72 hours with 15 characters is plenty of time to figure out whether this one deserves a spot in your rotation. Are you jumping on this weekend? Which character will you be fronting when the servers go live? Does a strong beta influence an August 6th purchase for you?
Sound off in the comments below!
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