Aren't we lucky you didn't get your way. Having the steady yearly release on the Neo was one of the cool things about the series that made it stand out. The fact that we got an installment after SNK went bankrupt completely floored me. I'd rather have the graphics, music, new characters and broken gameplay of 99 than not have it at all.
Oh, I wanted the yearly releases as they were happening. I was disappointed when 2003 was the final one. It was only in retrospect that a couple stand out as so terrible and/or completely redundant that SNK should have ditched the yearly deadline and spent an extra 6 months or a year making a better game that would have held up better.
KOF 13 is the game 12 should have been if they hadn't rushed a half-finished game to market. '98 is the game '97 should have been. 2001 probably would have been the game '99 should have been if SNK hadn't gone bankrupt and lost the talent & resources to make it what it could have been. But at the very least, 2000 is still a lot better than 1999.
2000 has music as good as 1999's. It has graphics as good as '99's. The striker system still wasn't perfect, but it was better than it was in '99. And new characters? 2000 had all the new characters, including the ones that were planned for '99 but not included,
because SNK ran out of time. But yeah, let's celebrate unfinished product.
