i know most people dont really care about this but the Sonic 3 prototype is so cool cause it represents a time in the game's development where they didn't have to rush things out to meet that McDonald's happy meal toy deadline and didn't work out the Michael Jackson thing yet
in that same vein, here's RAGE OF THE DRAGONS. yeah it may have legally grey uses of Billy and Jimmy from Double Dragon, but this one's a real gem that doesn't get talked about much. also, it was developed in Mexico, which is kinda the mecca for neo geo fighters
to start off my tangent about fighting games, THE KING OF FIGHTERS '98 might not be my favorite in the series, but it's def the most approachable one mechanically. a lot of the appeal to fighting games to me comes from duking it with friends or competitively, so it's pretty good!