Every Top-8 Player at Marvel Tōkon's First Major Tournament Picked Spider-Man
Spider-Man was on every single team in the top eight of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls' first major tournament, held at Community Effort Orlando (CEO) in Florida from August 14–16, 2026.
The 16th annual CEO drew 1,058 entrants to the Marvel Tōkon bracket alone — a turnout made more notable by the fact that the game had not been out for even a month at the time of the tournament, Eurogamer reported. Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is a 4v4 tag-team fighting game — players pick a squad of four characters and swap between them mid-match — developed by Arc System Works and PlayStation Studios in collaboration with Marvel Games, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
What made Spider-Man ubiquitous was his toolkit. Eurogamer noted that his strength comes from a strong offensive move list and one of the best overhead attacks in the game — strikes that start high and can catch an opponent who is blocking low — which he can pull out quickly. Most of the top-eight players used Spider-Man as an assist character, called in to support the main fighter rather than opening the match on point.
The exception was the player who won the whole tournament. SonicFox, one of the most decorated competitors in fighting-game esports, used Spider-Man as their starting character on the way to the CEO crown. SonicFox's four-person squad also included Green Goblin, Magneto, and Blade, according to tournament coverage.
Spider-Man was not the only character clustered at the top. Blade appeared on six of the eight top teams, and Magneto on five. Magik was the fourth most popular pick at CEO, having been the most popular character during the game's open beta, which ran July 24–26 on PlayStation 5 and PC.
Not every finalist leaned on the same formula. JWong, another veteran competitor, ran a team of Wolverine, Storm, Black Panther, and Blade — the only top-eight lineup that included Spider-Man's web-slinger solely through Blade's presence rather than the wall-crawler himself.
The dominance of a single character across an entire top eight is unusual in fighting games, where high-level play more often spreads across a wider cast. Some players have already called for nerfs — reductions to a character's power — to bring Spider-Man back in line, though no balance changes have been announced by the developer or publisher.
For a game not yet a month old, CEO offered the first real pressure test of Marvel Tōkon's competitive roster. Whether Spider-Man stays on every team or gets tuned down, the early message from Orlando is clear: the web is wide, and everyone is caught in it.
