@prockoe : What exactly are you looking for?
Using a 3d environment or a sprite based approach is fundamentally different in terms of initial setup. What are you going for? Full 3d or full sprite?
Even the control setup (aka 3d animations versus flipbooks/sprites) is already different. So your class should first decide, what you want to do, because it also will be a huge investment in terms of ressources. Sprites, which needs to be animated, need a ton of digital drawing. A 3d approach would need a fully rigged and skinned model, which also has animations.
I personally find your project cool, but I doubt you want to have stuff running on the arcade machine, which just showcases placeholder models and such. If you have a clear goal in mind and you keep the (first) project relatively small, neat and tidy, you will have a blast with your class and don’t run into something called “development hell”, which means never finishing a project :).
If you sorted that out, I can potentially help more :).