Details and footage of an unreleased Avengers video game from 2012 have emerged, revealing THQ Australia's final project before the studio was closed down.

Thanks to Unseen64 and DidYouKnowGaming, we can see that the game was a co-operative first-person brawler (featuring four-person split-screen play!) with its own story separate from the megahit movie.

Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk are represented, with Black Widow and Hawkeye intended as unlockable characters.

All the superheroes' abilities worked in first person, including Thor's lightning-summoning power and Hulk's thunderclap.

Players could use their characters' powers in tandem with one another, with many abilities taking the form of team buffs.

It's an unusual approach to superhero games, which have tended towards third-person action titles.

The game started development in 2010 at THQ Australia, with a goal of releasing alongside the Avengers movie in 2012.

But it was cancelled when THQ Australia was shut down in 2012 as part of a massive downsizing (and ultimately total liquidation) of THQ as a company.

The cancellation was not linked to concerns of quality, but to THQ's desperate financial troubles at the time – thanks to the failure of products like Homefront and the uDraw tablet.

Said comic writer Brian Michael Bendis, who worked on the project, "It was cool. It is cool. And I will never understand how they let that one sink and not sell it off when the whole company folded."

The Avengers was intended to release on Xbox 360 and PS3, with a Wii U version also on the cards, but now it exists more or less solely in the YouTube video below.