Wow. I'm a huge MMX fanboy, I couldn't be more excited.

No idea why people keep insisting on making sidescrollers in 3D.
Though I don't think they need to be in 3D per say, but I don't think it is a bad look either. All and all I think you probably need more artistic talent to make an extremely sharp looking game with high res sprites than with flashy 3D graphics, not to mention 3D is way easier to work with. (once you have a model you can easily animate it to do anything) I thought Maverick Hunter X for PSP looked extremely good.

Both work for me.