I vaguely remember reading it somewhere, but can't remember if this applied to ArcSys or SNK, but for method they do character sprites, they were actually 3D but converted into 2D in the previous games.
This looks great and I would love to play it but I know nobody local is going to bother with it =( I had a similar problem with KoF XIII I picked that up and loved it but I didn't have anybody to play with.