NGBC still hurts, man. All these great characters, some rather good sprite work, into a lackluster sound design and very... divisive team system.
If the rules had been the KOFXI ones (or even something insane like 2001), everything would have been very different. Instead, they went with.... one of the most boring implementations of a team system ever created until SFxT.
The choice of characters was so good... Real Athena, Lee Pailong, Asura, Tung, Mudman, Wild Robert, Chonshu and ChonRei... Also, the game gave us the best ship I never knew KOF needed: Shermie x BIG. They just belong to each other.
It sucks SNK rarely went the iterative route that Capcom almost always followed, and often left promising ideas to the trash instead of refining them with a sequel. I'm still dreaming of what NGBC2 could have been. The Hiroaki curse.