I bought my final NEO•GEO AES "proto convert", namely Samurai Spirits Zero Special "Kanzenban".
I managed to find a brand-new copy of the said convert produced by Atomikwave:
Aside form this thing being so well-made, with great production quality and total consistency with SNK official releases down to the minor fonts on the spine, you may wonder why it took so long for me to acquire it.
Well, when the "found proto drama" for this game first came out, I learnt the guy who secured it actually messed up with the code to arrange a someway official release with added bits, such as "corrected" title screens, added English translation, etc.
That I could not stand, because I'm a NEO·GEO collector and I'm mostly interested in things as they were in their days. And I know it well, this proto truly was a "location test" one-copy revision of a MVS cart truly produced with a mere P1 rom swap. Not a single pixel of graphics had been added into the romset, not a single note of music. Just recycling sprites and color swaps, just like "Street Fighter 2' Turbo HYPER FIGHTING" was back in its glory days (ahah, Chun Li's "kikouken" being two azure-recolored Dalshim's "yoga fire", do you remember that?).
Ok, later I discover mr. Atomikwave, also known as the man behind NCI, actually created a "fan-made-for-fans" conversion of this game using nothing but the original proto ROM, which was actually kind of sandboxed within the official release (that being tweaked on a higher, emulation level).
As a result, this conversion is the "real deal", for what it is:
Yes, no "完全版" nor "Perfect" tags added on screen. Just a color swap on the title logo as well: this game is commonly know as "AkaSamu" in Japan for a reason: "Aka(i)" means "red". :-)
So that's the way it should be to me. It took me some time to rewind the whole story, and I've been lucky enough to secure a brand-new, sealed copy of the game. Serial number I could't care less. But it's kind of fun that I see Atomikwawe being bashed by quite some NEO·GEO fans, while he's been able to produce such repros with no use of any sac-carts at all (PBC, cart shell, cart case are all original), and he's not selling his stuff as original to scam anyone.
On top of that, if we just consider the simple fact he never used the NEO·GEO logo on his officially VISCO-licensed titles, those being his company NCI labelled products, while he just could not resist to personally produce a fan-made proto-convert for this one, with official look-a-like artwork, well... I can't avoid thinking he must be a fellow NEO·GEO maniac to the bones! :-)
The NEO·GEO maniac I am, having completed my collection back in 2005, and having no interest in homebrew project whatsoever, my only further goals have been striving for "perfection" with my own collection piece, acquiring key memorabilia from the old days, and completing my "official MVS-only and proto games" collection. Of course, that comes with making quite a lot of new friends along the way, to design better and better "official look-a-like inserts", and so on.
Yes, this "scene" has always been and today is even more full of fishy businesses, shady dealers, ignorant posers and so on. Innoence has long been lost. But truly passionate connoisseurs still hang around, just keeping a low-profile and doing their fun and passionate stuff. So, once again, I thank this website community. Speaking of which, this is from the credit page of my fanbook I finally managed to publish two years ago, "SPECIAL THANKS":