I’m gonna be real here:
My interest in the Neo Geo brand and hardware came from the fact that it originally signified an uncompromised experience (regional differences not withstanding) in the 90’s. For better or worse, the home system was the arcade game experience in the home and represented a true alternative to watered down ports, downgraded graphics and sound, or significantly altered gameplay. Even after the CPS2 and other arcade hardware blew it away, on home consoles (including SNK’s own cd system), the ports of Neo Geo games were always inferior in some way: smaller sprites, missing animations, loading times, even the dreamcast ports had sound issues. It wasn’t until the ps2 era when the consoles could outright emulate the games that a lot of the Neo Geo library finally came home and played the same as the (then decade old) original Neo Geo home system.
All this Neo Geo retro interest and homebrew is cool, but why not just play and enjoy the original uncompromised game on steam, switch, ps4, xbox, etc? If it’s about having a physical release, Final Vendetta shipped ages ago for just about every system listed above.
I know many are excited to play this title on Neo Geo hardware, and more power to them; to each their own. I just don’t understand why one would pay hundreds of dollars for a downport/inferior release of an independent game. It just seems to fly in the face of what SNK was trying to achieve with the Neo Geo in the first place.