Ninety minutes of footage from a game most people forgot existed has just surfaced online, and it's the kind of leak that hurts a little. Avalanche Studios, the team behind the Just Cause series, was quietly working on an Iron Man game that never saw the light of day.
As first spotted by IGN, nine separate gameplay clips totaling nearly an hour and a half have surfaced online, with the footage subsequently shared on Reddit's r/GamingLeaksAndRumours. The clips show an early version of Avalanche's canceled Iron Man project, offering a rare look at what the studio had planned before development was shut down.
Before anything else: this is not the EA Motive Iron Man game. Avalanche's project was a completely separate game that was in development years earlier and was ultimately canceled.
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What the footage actually shows
The clips cover a wide range of gameplay scenarios. You get Iron Man flying through large open environments, which makes sense given Avalanche's history with Just Cause's massive sandbox worlds. Combat sequences show repulsor cannons, gadgets, and Tony Stark squaring off against fighter jets, helicopters, and foot soldiers.
One clip stands out above the rest: a video labeled "E3 Demo" that includes a full opening sequence, a startup screen, and a boss fight against a giant mech. It's the most polished-looking segment in the batch, which suggests Avalanche had at least one vertical slice ready to show before the project was killed.
The footage quality isn't perfect, but there's enough here to get a clear read on the game's direction. The whole thing feels reminiscent of the Iron Man games released on PS3 and PSP back in the day, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Avalanche's history with licensed open-world games
Here's the thing: Avalanche building an Iron Man game isn't as random as it sounds. The studio has a long track record with open-world action games, and their Just Cause series is practically built around the fantasy of being an unstoppable one-person army with gadgets and freedom of movement. Iron Man, a character defined by flight, mobility, and tech-based combat, fits that mold almost perfectly.
The canceled game clearly leaned into that DNA. The open environments and aerial combat in the leaked footage look like a natural extension of what Avalanche does well. What most players miss when they see canceled game footage like this is how much of the core loop was already functional. This wasn't a concept demo. The flight mechanics, combat systems, and enemy variety were all running.
Why this surfaces now
Canceled game footage leaking years after the fact isn't unusual. Developers move on, builds sit on old hardware, and eventually something finds its way out. The Avalanche Iron Man project was never officially announced, but its cancellation became public knowledge a few years back. The footage appearing now suggests someone with access to the build decided the world should see what could have been.
The pro tip for anyone who wants to watch the clips: search the r/GamingLeaksAndRumours thread directly, as the footage is spread across multiple posts rather than compiled in one place.
What this means for Iron Man games going forward
Avalanche's canceled project joining the graveyard of Marvel games that never shipped is a familiar story at this point. The license has had a complicated history with developers, and the footage serves as a reminder of how many attempts have been made to get a proper Iron Man game right.
The key here is that EA Motive is now the only active Iron Man game in development, and the pressure on that project just got a little higher. Watching 90 minutes of what Avalanche was building will set expectations, fairly or not, for what a modern Iron Man game should feel like.
If you're into games that scratch a similar itch right now, Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator leans into that same fantasy of controlling overwhelming firepower from a fixed position. Check out the all gold medal requirements guide if you want to push your runs further, or browse the full Iron Nest strategy guides collection while the wait for EA Motive's Iron Man continues.
