Why aren't there any 3D fighters using mechanics from 2D fighters?

By '3D fighter', I mean proper 3D, not that side-stepping bullshit from Mortal Kombat and Dead Or Alive.

For those of you wondering what the hell I'm talking about, I'm talking about taking traditional 2D fighting game mechanics, and transplanting them into a fighting game that uses a fully-3D movement system - keep the special move commands, multiple attack buttons (low, med, heavy variants of punches and kicks, etc.) and whatever game-specific mechanics, but adjust them for a 3D environment.

Now, fighting game fanatics are probably wondering what nonsense I'm spewing out onto my keyboard - surely it can't be that simple, otherwise fighting games would've done it years ago! Except, well, conceptually, it actually seems perplexingly simple - so simple that I'm surprised that nobody's tried it yet. The main challenges are movement controls and camera. Both of which have been solved by other games and existing control schemes.

For example, let's take Street Fighter. Six-button game, invented the whole stick-based command system that's standard for most 2D fighters. The only thing you need to add is a jump button (keep that on the bottom of the face-button diamond, and have the left and top buttons be the 'low' attack buttons, while the med and heavy buttons being on the shoulder buttons/triggers), a second click stick for camera control (camera control isn't even necessary if you just want one-on-one fights and nothing else, just keep both fighters locked on to each other constantly), and nothing else. For the commands, just 'rotate' them 90 degrees counter-clockwise, so to speak - so rather than, say, "down, quarter-circle forward" being down and then left or right depending on which way the character is facing, the command is instead right, and then quarter-circle towards the front of the stick/pad instead, since the fighter will usually always be facing their opponent. If you want to emulate the 'distance limit' between fighters that exist in 2D fighters (which mainly exists to keep both fighters on-screen without having to zoom the camera out), you can easily do something similar, except with a circular radius rather than the borders of the screen.

Now, aside from those, does anything fundamentally change or break? Not really, in theory. All you're really doing is adding a third dimension to the movement mechanics. Some moves might be tweaked to compensate for the fact that fighters can move to the side as well as forwards and backwards, but if you were gonna side-step a fireball, you could've just as easily jumped over it anyway.

I'm not a hardcore fighting game player, so I'm probably over-simplifying things right now, but I think a 3D fighter using tweaked variants of 2D mechanics could be interesting if it actually works. It could also expand what a fighting game might be capable of in terms of content - now that you can move around and manually control a camera, maybe the game could have sections similar to a beat-em-up, except you have a full fighting game moveset to unleash on hapless mooks. That would be fun as hell, I think.

Now, I know what I'm arguing isn't a certainty, but to my knowledge, I'm pretty sure nobody's even tried it yet. But I think with enough adjustments and tweaks, what I'm talking about could very well work.

Thoughts?

What about something like Rival Schools? I know that had side stepping and such, along with Street Fighter style moves. For something more recent, there's Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe, which, while it had issues, I honestly had fun with. There's plenty more than that, too.

I recommend that you look at the Budokai Tenkaichi games.

Once again, those aren't what I'm talking about - I'm talking fighters with full 3D movement and behind-the-back camera control.

Played BT 2, enjoyed it, but it's nothing like a traditional 2D fighter.

edited 30th Apr '14 12:13:40 AM by Cronosonic

Those aren't the same as Budokai...the Shin-Budokai games make that a reverse effect.

So stuff like Dissidia Final Fantasy?

I assume this is a looking from behind the character 3D style game, not a side view?

Fireball movements would be something like L, UL, U+Punch or R, UR, U+Punch, uppercut motions would be U, L, UL or U, R, UR. Charge moves would be Hold D, then U+Attack. L, R+Attack (or R, L+Attack) to do a wide slash or something. Other than that I can't think of other commands to make.

Oh! I've actually thought of something just like you're asking.

This is One Must Fall: Battlegrounds, incredibly obscure sequel to One Must Fall 2097. Sadly, it wasn't NEARLY as good as the original game, which is pretty much the best original fighting game you'll find on the PC. Partly due to reasons like the weird perspective, but see if this works for you.

I've made a thread about this before. I've always been weirded out by canned combo trees being tied to 3D fighters exclusively and command inputs being almost exclusively used by 2D fighters. It can't just be the format. It shouldn't be, at least.

There are degrees between "sidestepping bullshit" and "put the camera behind him". Take Soul Calibur's eight way run (which was touted as revolutionary, even through professional wrestling games had been doing it for decades). The only thing that's really needed is the ability to actually run, as in sprint in all eight directions (you can only sprint at the enemy, which again, make its movement more primitive than a gazillion wrestling games before it).