Quick impressions on '03... it reminds me a lot of Re-Bout. The backgrounds are very well done and are revamped to the point where some are hard to recognize even after playing '03 on the Neo. In addition, a lot of the backgrounds scroll. Unlike Re-Bout, all of the scrolling I've seen so far is horizontal, so at times this game seems to be the Terry Bogard experience.
The soundtrack is arranged, of course, and for more info you can look in this forum for the thread on when the AST was released in November. I enjoy the AST, personally, and most others did as well.
Confirmed that the boobs in '03 do bounce. Gee, the game has been out for a day already and President Bush hasn't called for the bombing of Japan... do you think that maybe bouncing titties isn't the catastrophic event that SNK has traditionally made it out to be?
Gameplay is the question mark. Most everything that I tried seem to work, but I wasn't able to dig in here. One troubling thing that I saw was that the sprite for Kusanagi got stuck for about 5 seconds and went into a seizure before freeing himself. Hopefully that won't be an often occurrence. For all I know, it could be a rare occurrence on the Neo, but I've never seen it happen before there.
More info: The intro is touched up, but it is the original intro from the Neo. From the start, the options to use the original backgrounds and the original music are available in the options menu. The sprites themselves look like they came straight from the Neo. Personally, I don't have any problem with the sprite quality clashing with the backgrounds, but some might. As much of a technical marvel as Re-Bout is (to use new sprites while preserving the old gameplay), I feel much safer with the original sprites as the integrity of the gameplay is too dependent on hit detection.
To conclude, SNK seems to have found the right formula for a good port, and KOF '03 will be one of the best ones they ever did if the gameplay holds up. Here's the Re-Bout formula to a good port (minus the re-done intro, which is really optional, and the re-done sprites, which is really risky):
- re-do all of the backgrounds, and use scrolling to push the envelope
- use an arranged soundtrack
- keep the gameplay as close to the original as possible
- provide menu options to allow purists to choose the original BGs and BGMs
- no censorship