While Capcom have mostly switched to using 3D art for their 2D fighting games, they do use 2D artwork on occasion. Two recent games have featured 2D art, both of them being remakes of older titles: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (2008) and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike Online Edition (2011).
Replying to a forum user’s request for more games in the style of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Capcom USA’s Christian Svensson says that the costs for such a project may would be difficult to shoulder, relative to sales.
“I can’t overstate what a tricky project [Super Street Fighter II Turbo] HDR was,” Svensson writes in his reply. “I’m happy with the outcome (critically, community wise, sales wise) but it was a really hard tightrope to walk and some points in development were really scary (like when we threw away about 2,500 frames of animation in various stages of completion because we weren’t happy with them and started again).”
“And the consumer expectation bar has moved considerably,” he continues. “The costs of doing a project like that today, with the attention to detail/features that SF3:Online Edition had, it would be difficult for sales forecasts to shoulder.”
Despite this, Svensson says more games with 2D artwork are possible in the future. “That said, we’ll see what the future holds,” he writes. “Creatively, I’d like to do more 2D stuff in the future like this.”
