Yes once again, a multicart for AW would be welcomed because for starters why not? And Dreamcast ODE aside, Naomi NetBoot AW conversions are definitely not the way to go for playing AW games unless you just want to play them as they are. You will get a convenient experience via Naomi NetBoot but it wouldn’t be optimal. You have the Jamma to JVS input lag issue and some games are completely borked on Naomi, the most notable being Dolphin Blue. Playing it on NetBoot versus the actual game on AW is like night and day. I’m not hating on people who like NetBoot, it’s fine and they can go enjoy it, but don’t limit the options for other audiences.
A multicart for AW would for starters solve a very annoying issue with certain games that require time release as the only option for unlocking stuff. I am looking at you KOFXI. Normally if you are a one game, one board person, then this wouldn’t be an issue. You would never change games, so in this case for KOFXI, the characters would always be on the eeprom. But say you want to play Metal Slug 6 or any other game? Then here’s to another 1440 hours to unlock the secret characters. And for KOFXI, that’s 1440 hours played, not 1440 hours of the board on the demo attract screen.
And this is a community of enthusiasts who like playing on original hardware, so why not let us AW owners enjoy our setups more? AW games have skyrocketed like everything else and the bootleg carts on Ali express don’t seem to be a cheap option anymore as they aren’t as prevalent as they were before.
And while the recently announced rumble fish 2 port sounds nice, iirc, it is mainly a project by the company who licensed it from Dimps, and not by Dimps themselves. And there is already talk about that company doing many changes to the game like making it 16:9, changing move properties and basically making a different game. Also it’s very likely the new port is based on the Nesica version which is different from the AW game (Nesica besides balance changes, has redone effect graphics (whether said graphics changes are for the better is debatable), and load times and loading screens).
There is definitely a market for AW multis, I would love one for KOFXI alone due to not having to worry about the characters going bye bye whenever I want to change games. And with a multicart, if I ever decided to buy a second AW board for the arcade events I run or borrow my friend’s board, I could run two HNK setups since HNK along with RF2 are the only AW games I own (and cherish).
HNK is definitely not coming back and if it does, it would be like the PS2 port which had bug fixes, better performance on the stages that tanked on the AW, balance changes and less music copyright infringement (I am looking at you Souther stage). The PS2 port was like fine if that’s the only way you can play HNK, but the AW original is the most preferred version. That and the PS2 port is only 480i as ASW couldn’t be bothered to do 480p like SNK did for KOFXI. Also the load times on PS2 compared to the AW cartridge.
So yes again, AW multi would be so amazing and it has a more varied library than the cps3 which doesn’t say much. And I’m a cps3 ultra simms and bios owner too.