NeoGeo (fba) rom suffixes meaning?

AndersHP

Are NeoGeo (finalburnalpha) rom name suffixes the same as these?

For example:
kof2001 vs kof2001h - last rom 'hack'?
kof2002 vs kof2002b - last rom 'bad dump'?
kotm2 vs kotm2p - last rom 'pirate'?
aof2 vs aof2a - last rom 'alternate'?
aof3 vs aof3k - korean, or?

For general casual gaming - are the "normal" versions the ones to keep? Or is hacked and alternate versions better games because of bug patches?
What do you guys do?

And is it correct that fba neogeo roms doesn't have parent roms - meaning that deleting some roms won't influence the playability of others?

lostless

It’s up to you if you want the hacks or the originals. Depends if you like the changes. As far as all roms having no parents is not true. The hack of snk vs Capcom I have, which has all secret characters unlocked, uses the original parent rom to work.

AndersHP

OK, but what about the a, b, k, h etc. meaning? Is the above mentioned correct?

lostless

B is bootleg. Meaning is was modified to run on diferent hardware. P is prototype. K is Korean. A is alternate. Most likely an older buggier version. The parent roms are usually the most recent. Can’t find out what the others means.

user50217

There are short descriptions for each rom in FB Alpha v0.2.97.43 DAT File - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/FinalBurn-Alpha/
For example: <game name="kof2001h" cloneof="kof2001" romof="kof2001">
<description>The King of Fighters 2001 (NGH-2621)</description>

I'm not sure myself, but to quote some guy from reddit: "NGH is home (AES), NGM is arcade (MVS).
Some games (such as the later KOFs) have things like practice modes in their NGH versions."
So H suffix is supposedly the home version of the game.

<game name="kof2002b" cloneof="kof2002" romof="kof2002">
<description>The King of Fighters 2002 (bootleg) [Bootleg]</description>
<game name="kotm2p" cloneof="kotm2" romof="kotm2">
<description>King of the Monsters 2 - The Next Thing (prototype) [Prototype]</description>
Hopefully this is helpful.

thelostsoul

From the Docs there is a link to a Google spreadsheet with compatibility list of the games for the lr-fbalpha emulator. It contains the full name of the game for each rom version. I use CTRL+F in Firefox to open the search bar.

I usually use the base version, as it is the "normal" one (normally). @user50217 Thanks for pointing out this. I was thinking about to reorganize my Neo Geo collection and this is an important information to me. To be more precise, I meant the information about NGH home version of rom and NGM. I thought its only depending on the bios.