As it turns out, Marvel’s Iron Man had another canceled video game that predates the would-be project from Just Cause studio Avalanche.
This newly revealed project would have come courtesy of the now-defunct studio Genepool Software. According to then-programmer Kevin Edwards, the developer was working on the title following the release of X2: Wolverine’s Revenge in 2003.
Interestingly, this game’s primary armor was based on Iron Man’s suit from the Ultimate Marvel comics. Had it come out, it would’ve joined 2005’s Ultimate Spider-Man in bringing Marvel’s alternate reality to a wider audience.
To Edwards’ knowledge, what was then The Invincible Iron Man was never shown before this point in time. Along with his screenshots of the project, he explained that Activision eventually canned it and shut down Genepool.
In his recollection, Genepool was “five to six months” into production and the game “looked great” before its untimely end. He wasn’t sure why the project was killed but speculated it was partly because the Iron Man movie had been delayed in production.
“We never got to hear the exact reasons,” Edwards noted. “Perhaps they didn’t think the game was good enough and therefore didn’t want to fund it further. Or perhaps some other dev was lined up to get it instead.”
After Genepool, Iron Man went to Sega for a pair of tie-in games. Avalanche was then approached to do its own project, which was canceled after being asked to make it in a short timeframe.
Following Iron Man VR from Camouflaj, EA’s Motive studio is the next developer tasked with delivering a solo Iron Man game. Nothing from that project has been shown thus far, but Motive has been open about soliciting community feedback, similar to what it did for its Dead Space remake.