At the beginning of this month, a bunch of SNK titles were removed from the Google Play Store, with the developer issuing a press release saying that these games will now no longer be able to download, even if you previously bought a copy prior to its removal.
In other words, if you don't want to risk losing the selected games, the only way to continue playing them is to keep them installed on your device, or face having to cough up more cash to purchase them all over again.
In total, the company lists 9 titles as being affected, with these including SNK Playmore's Android ports of Blazing Star, Metal Slug, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug X, Fatal Fury Special, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, The King Of Fighters '97, The King Of Fighters ’98, and Samurai Shodown II. Fortunately, it appears this doesn't apply to separate Hamster's ACA versions of these games, which are all still available as far as we can see, but those versions do come at a slightly higher cost and probably won't be much of a consolation for those who have lost titles they've already paid for.
No reason was given for SNK's removal of these inside the press statement, but as part of the same announcement the company revealed it recently had to remove Metal Slug 3 from the Google Play Store, on June 2, 2025, for "optimization issues on the latest Android OS and devices", which suggests that may also be culprit here.
The iOS versions of the game appear to be unaffected.