Marvel's Avengers brought a renaissance for superheroes with the MCU. In many ways, comic book fans have the Avengers movies to thank for making nerd culture more mainstream, though not every one Earth's mightiest heroes outings actually saw the light of day, including a canceled Avengers game by THQ. However, it appears footage from that title has leaked, showing fans what could have been.
Of course, this game shouldn't be confused with Square Enix's upcoming Avengers game. That is still slated to launch later this fall, and while it's a seemingly different take on the heroes, it still has many comic fans excited. The leaked footage comes from an Avengers game being made by THQ Australia before the company closed.
The footage comes from what is clearly a very early build of the game. Characters function, and there are environments and enemies, but many things are still missing textures, effects, and polish. The footage briefly shows each character in action as they battle their way through a seemingly wrecked spaceship. The four characters shown — Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor — have their own abilities, and seems fairly interesting to play.
Originally, the game was intended to release in 2012 alongside the Avengers movie, but, for a variety of reasons, that never happened. There's been a mixture of Marvel game's released since then, from Spider-Man on PS4 to Ultimate Alliance 3. Square Enix's upcoming game features a notable voice acting cast, but a different look and feel from the other games to release recently, which make it stand out among the rest of the crowd, at least to a degree.
It's disappointing that this Avengers never hit shelves, but game development is fickle, even for major IP like The Avengers. EA has canceled Star Wars games, despite the fact that Star Wars is one of the biggest entertainment franchises of all time, so nothing is immune to being canceled.
It may have been hard for THQ to predict just how massive the Avengers would go on to become. Endgame is the highest-grossing movie of all time, and its characters are immediately recognizable to millions of people. Who knows, though, maybe a playable build of the canceled game will show up sometime.