All material technique werent fake, for example that screenshot of cosmic smash up there has the "fake" specular but also some models( the player character had real material such as actual specular calculation) thats a material. Same with some other games. In some games both are used simultaneously.
In the case of ttt they did it by choice. Even in sc2 they had characters using the exact same technique fully on the entire body , some used none or just on small details. Stage wise in sc2 only 1 stage does it to make glossy marble material. They purposely turned it down , reasons who knows but ID bet its artistic resasons whether they felt maybe it was over used in ttt? There nothing stopping them from doing it again, heck they still extensively used it after ttt.
Xianghua/ yoshimitsu(alot of others) pretty much did the same as those two for their silk costumes, the most interesting use was on emblems or patters on clothing. Heres a couple example from a model viewer, metal and sil material. Wont look exactly as in game but its just to illustrate.
Metal (base texture, Env map angle 1, env map angle 2)
Silk + emblem(base texture, env angle 1, env angle 2)