Before Sega acquired the rights to develop Iron Man games based on the movies, those rights were with Activision. The first film saw numerous delays, which led to Activision ultimately dropping the license, and Sega picking it up.
While Activision’s game never saw the light of day, we managed to track down some concept designs pertaining to it. Once upon a time, the game was to allow the players to “invent” their own weapons and armour loadout, in order to reflect Tony Stark’s genius inventor background. This is something that the Sega-published game did allow in for in a limited capacity.
Another interesting theory was that players should be allowed to load their own MP3s into their “armour” and create their own soundtrack for the game. Additionally, a very wide variety of interesting weapons were planned, one of these being a laser that could ricochet off walls and be used to solve puzzles.
Another was a “tractor beam” that would be used to pick up and manipulate objects. You would’ve been able to use these objects for melee combat. Also designed for the purpose of melee combat was a medium-range beam blade (above).
Concepts also show plans for a space station with a Super Mario Galaxy-like gravity feature. Hacking puzzles were planned, too, in a rock-paper-scissors style minigame, or a game where you have to send a beam through corridors, avoiding obstacles.