I think it comes down to effort.
The company poors its effort into a neo title that people gladly surrender hundreds for. Its the mentality of art and gaming lunatics.
The port gets minimal effort to the original game, cause its not a unique product, its been done.
Whether you use roms, go to cades, buy the games on home systems, or involve any way in neo, you know the difference.
Its not that any of the ports were bad, its that they are made to be inferior to the original.
How can they not be?
SNKP is convinced the mainstream wont accept KOF 2003 as a release unless some glitz tweak is done.
I play neo games cause neo is hardware at its best. This is why we are so hard on every SINGLE ELEMENT of these games. We disect play to the most impossibly hard combos, to even bugs and infinites (kof example)
Neo Geo fans are hardcore cause they see the system different then any other system they own. Its not cause its more expensive, not cause its retro, not any of these reasons. Its cause this system has maxed its potential and went on for years with that potential maxed releasing KILLER fucking games.
You take a look at Garou and the whole KOF series. The effort and work put into it is amazing. Its like they could read our minds on the things we like to play.
You dudes are coming to the home of the Neo Geo lunatics, the people who are here for the neo, dead or undead. Then you cram these fuckin moral bs beliefs onto us, when we know what we like.
Its not that we hate hi res, its that its NOT neo geo. NG.COM IS FOR NEO GEO.
NG is 2d based sprite gaming with crazy animation, and most importantly purely focused gameplay.
Look at all the vids on the net. NOTHING in the world has more gameplay vids then the neo. You can confirm this by looking at all the sites who make for it. Even the bad ass stuff capcom does doesnt have this OCD related following.
I mean shit, you dont see games like FFS today. NG games also have a replay that no system has ever matched.