I know you didn't ask for all this, but I was bored and needed a writing prompt lol
The term 2.5D is correct. This means that the game incorporates rendered 3D graphics, but players are limited to movement in two dimensions. However, I would not classify the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot as pseudo-3D.
As opposed to 2.5D, pseudo-3D is a slightly broader term that doesn't apply to the MK reboot. The prefix pseudo-, of course, means "fake," so that term doesn't apply in this case because that particular game uses rendered 3D graphics. The MK reboot only plays more like the original arcade game in that players can't shuffle around the arena in three dimensions like they can in its predecessor MK: Armageddon. Of course, the term 2.5D has nothing to do with fractional dimensions or anything too complicated for me to comprehend much less explain. Simply put, two-dimensional movement in a three-dimensional environment is referred to as "2.5D" as the gaming experience isn't fully 3D nor is it fully 2D—it's a mix of two different geometrical systems.
Much unlike the MK reboot, though, the original 1992 MK arcade game did not use rendered 3D graphics, but it is considered a pseudo-3D game for two reasons. First, the game has parallax scrolling. Parallax scrolling uses layered background images, and the further away each layer is from the foreground, the slower it moves. So, when the "camera" moves in any direction, each layer of the background also moves in that same direction at a speed determined by its relative position to the foreground. This movement creates the illusion of a 3D environment, but it is, in fact, quite 2D.
The other reason the original MK is considered a pseudo-3D game is because the developers used imported still photos of live actors. More specifically, they essentially took videos of the actors walking, jumping and doing "karate moves" in front of a green screen, and then they scanned still frames in intervals into a digital environment to animate them in sequence at a much slower frame rate. These are known as digitized sprites, which differs from other sprite types in that they weren't created solely in a digital environment; the sprites existed in real life and had to be imported into the game's code. (Side note: I believe each character sprite in MK had somewhere in the range of 300 frames to account for all the animations)
So, the original MK was pseudo-3D because it looked, smelled, and tasted like a 3D game, but it was in every sense a 2D game. The techniques used to create the original MK arcade game were also used to create games like Primal Rage and the ClayFighter series, both of which were essentially the same style of game as MK, only still images of clay figures were digitized instead of live actors.
Also, taking a real-life 3D object and digitizing it is not the only way to create pseudo-3D graphics. There are, of course, other pseudo-3D games out there that employ different means of producing a 3D illusion—most all of the ones I remember are ones that I cherished in my younger years. Some games, like Rad Racer for the NES, used projection algorithms to simulate a player-controlled car driving on a desert road course. Other games, like Marble Madness and Q*bert used voxel graphics (or, more specifically, "isometric projection") to create a perceived 3D field of play using the player's perspective experience against them. Games like these used bit-mapping to create game sprites instead of importing still frames of real objects.
A final side note:
Some people might remember that Rad Racer for the NES took the whole 3D "LAZER TIME!®" thing a step further by including a 3D mode that players could enable by pressing the Select button during a race. When active, this mode converted what the player saw into a red/blue wireframe mode, which was pretty much pointless if you didn't have a pair of the old skool red/blue 3D glasses. I remember getting Rad Racer, which came with a pair of said glasses, for my 4th birthday...
It was absolute Heaven back then, but complete shit in hindsight. I ended up losing the glasses after a week, and as abundant as those red/blue 3D glasses were back in the late-80s, I never did find another pair until well after the Rad Racer game cartridge itself had met it's untimely demise in any one of numerous fashions—borrowed and never returned, fell to the wayside as the ol' lick-and-blow-out-the-cartridge method had ceased to work, left to wander the bottom of a box of unused Lego, melted in a science project mishap, backed over by my uncle's Buick...
Who knows?
I still played the heck out of 3D mode. Why? BECAUSE 33333333DDDDDDD!!!!!!!
Alas, I miss the unsurety of it all something fierce. Being that age at that time—essentially watching the mainstream world transition into the digital age through a child's eyes, and not only that, but personifying that glorious transition vicariously through second-hand consumerism.
I remember on my 4th birthday, my mom started paying me 1/4 my age in allowance every week. This practice of "teaching me how to save" would go on until I was fifteen, which forced me to get a work permit and job at (you guessed it) Blockbuster Video. Anyway, the first year of allowance, I got $1 every Friday and was told that I could spend it or save it. Then at age 5, I started getting $1... gasp and a whole quarter! I eventually developed the habit of saving all the quarters until I had a roll. Then, when my grandfather took me to that bygone High's Ice Cream for a treat, he would read the paper for an hour and let me blow through as much of $10 worth of quarters as I could playing that rickety Captain America arcade machine that had a tragically discolored monitor.
And, now, these are the days of our lives.
So, anyway...thanks for making it this far through my unwarranted banter :)
You're probably the only person who will ever read this, so I hope it was as fun to read as it was to author.
Oh, and "damn kids these days," bah-humbuggery, and a yada-yada nap time (for great justice)!
Zzzzz...