As folks might know about me, I will absolutely go to the mat to argue the virtue and value of early 90’s games that use digitized live actors. Don’t ask why I find value in them– I don’t have a very good or convincing answer for you! I think it’s probably just a combo of my awareness that there was an honest attempt at boundary pushing with many of these games, combined with my own personal nostalgia for the specific moment in time when games like this existed (and probably also my sympathy for their poor status as part of an evolutionary dead end in game assets).
EDIT: these screenshots look hilariously even worse when scaled up like this! It wasn’t my intention but I sure do love it!
These are, as far as I can attest to, 2D games, even though some read as 3D or 2.5D. I know there are some big names like Mortal Kombat, as well as games that include low-resolution sprites derived from CG animations (like Killer Instinct), but I’m mostly talking about the extremely trashy and low-res looking stuff. For example!
Battle Monsters (Arcade, Sega Saturn)
Pit Fighter (Arcade, various consoles)
Guardians of the Hood (Arcade)
…And the crown jewel, Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (Arcade, Saturn, PSX), which I think is higher quality than the rest, but is still janky and trashy.
Honourable Mention: Shinobi Legions (Saturn). It’s I think a better looking game than the rest (not a high bar), but it has so much CG content on top of digitized live actors that it feels like it falls a bit outside of my extremely vague set of criteria.