What Tim Ballisto was trying to explain is how to do a 2d side scrolling game using 3d techniques. I don't quite know what type of scrolling you're looking for (level scrolling, paralax scrolling, etc.). For paralax scrolling just make sure you have two sprites. One is the main background that scrolls in one direction so far every second, and another is the seconday background image the scrolls in the opposite direction so far every second.
For scrolling the 2d level, you could create a point at which the little Mario type character (sorry, whenever I think of 2d platform I think of Mario)cannot go any further past the screen until the level runs out. At that point you can just scroll the level.
To do the cloud thing have some math that knows the x and y size of the cloud image, then if the image is so far past the edge of the screen (say you're in 640,480, cloud is 32x32, if cloudimage x is 640+32) then position it on the left side of the screen out of range by however units big it is (carrying over from the previous example -32).
You can still do it using 2d commands, or you can just texture all your images onto plains and move the plains around like sprites in 3d.
Crazy Donut Productions
Current Project: KillZone
