I hope this isn't a stupid question

Why don't all SNK fighting games look as good as Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves?

The animation is just perfect. So much better in the drawing department as well. Why the hell would Playmore not use something this good more often?

2 reasons.

1) Cart Size. Apparently anyting arround 700mb is approaching the limits of a Neo cart's capacity. Smoother animation requires more memory, as do larger sprites. So you could'nt have a KoF-size character selection (40+) with MOTW-quality animation.

2) Development costs. It simply costs more money to draw more animation frames, and we all know that SNK's finances were none to healthy back in 1999.
Imagine how muh it would cost them to re-draw 40+ characters in MOTW style. I'm not sure SNK (or Playmore) could afford to do that all at once.

Very good points.

Also, MOTW was a major SNK legacy title. Fatal Fury was SNK's biggest draw. MOTW had to be PERFECT to sedate the fans. After that point the company went downhill and didn't have the time or money to keep that level up.

They say the sequel is half done somewhere.