Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls Phoenix Cyclops DLC, My Thoughts

Since last June on this here blog, I looked at the various trailers of the Arc System Works-developed and Sony-released Marvel fighting game Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls. The game uses a unique mechanic of starting with one character, plus an assist, then unlock other characters through satisfying certain conditions. As part of this mechanic, the game has five "teams" of four characters: the Unbreakable X-Men, the Amazing Guardians, the Fighting Avengers, the Knights of Doom, and the Samurai Outriders.

All in all, that means this game has twenty characters you can choose to play as. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any room for more characters to join the party! Especially considering that the Marvel Universe has been around for over 80 years, and has seen hundreds of characters, both famous and obscure. ASW and Sony seem to agree on this idea, as we now have the trailer for the first DLC character: Cyclops! Let's take a look!

In case you're wondering, Ray Chase voices Cyclops in X-Men '97, the sequel to the classic 1990s X-Men cartoon. He took over as Scott Summers's voice as Norm Spencer, Cyclops's VA in the original cartoon, had died in 2020. Chase's Cyclops voice is pretty darn good.

Cyclops has had a bit of a renaissance in recent years. His portrayal in X-Men '97, his being a playable character in Marvel Cosmic Invasion, and James Marsden will be reprising him in Avengers: Doomsday after portraying him in the Fox X-Men films.

I find it interesting that we're not getting standard Cyclops, but Phoenix Cyclops from the 2012 crossover storyline Avengers vs. X-Men. In that story, Cyclops (alongside Emma Frost, Colossus, Magik, and Namor the Sub-Mariner) got bonded to fragments of the Phoenix Force.

He looks really good, like he stepped right out of the comic books.

Art from Avengers vs. X-Men #5 (June 2012) by John Romita, Jr.

The dialogue seems to imply that instead of having a piece of the Force like he did in the comics, this version of Cyclops has the whole Force in him. Which...can be worse than just having a piece. I mean, the Phoenix itself posed as Jean Grey to understand humanity, and well...we all saw what came of that.

I'm just saying. Power corrupts, and all that. Although some would also say that power reveals, and considering that Cyclops got drunk on Phoenix Force not long before the X-Men got all ethnosupremacist cult in the Krakoa Era...yeah. We're seeing a far less human Cyclops than normal.

I think there is a reason why they're introducing this version of Cyke. Presumably, they can do more with the Phoenix Force than just his standard optic blasts, and I think it also allows them to be a little different from other games that used the character, like Cosmic Invasion. 

Well, I hope people really enjoy using Cyclops and he turns out to be a fun character to play as. I'm going to go enjoy him in Cosmic Invasion myself. Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourselves and each other! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourselves and each other! If you like what I write and want to give this blog some additional support, please make a donation to my Ko-Fi! See you next time!