You boycotted Nintendo because of what Rare did to their own game when porting it? Do you also boycott Microsoft now that they own Rare or do you have some kind of weird double standard?

err... did you ever consider that perhaps those systems weren't actually powerful enough to support the "full" Killer Instinct experience, so there was no way for it not to seem "downgraded" from the real deal?

(I was in my early 20's when that came out in the arcades. I remember it well)

The SNES certainly wasn't able to reproduce the arcade experience. The N64 should have been.

Over the years, I have considered buying an old arcade cabinet just to re-experience the magic.

I just need to find the space for it.

You should do that. Don't lose the wide-eyed kid inside. :)

Many years ago, someone made a PC based Killer Instinct emulator and I played it whenever I was feeling nostalgic.

I had problems getting it to run under XP, I wonder how well it would work under 7.