I finished up work on the Donkey Kong last night.  I re-capped the monitor, hooked up the coin door, and rebuilt the original joystick.  Nintendo joysticks are definitely odd beasts.  The joystick that came with the DK was rusted out and pretty much beyond repair.  Luckily I had two Nintendo VS joysticks that I pulled out of another cab.  They were similar enough that I was able to combine the nicest parts from all three to make one good DK stick.

So now my Donkey Kong is pretty much back to her original 1981 glory.  Every single piece of her is either from an original DK machine, or using exact replica parts.  I still have a few odds and ends I need to work on, but I’m to the point now where she’s 100% playable.

Finished cleaning up the inside of the DK cabinet this weekend.  She was stinky, but thanks to some advice on the KLOV forums I managed to get it under control with some Clorox Clean-Up.  After giving her a few hours to dry off I stuck on the new side art that came with the cabinet.  All she needs now is some new t-molding and a DK marquee and she’ll be a Donkey Kong again!

Cleaned up the Donkey Kong last night.  Used a heat gun to take off the side art and only had to do a little scrubbing with some Goo Gone to get the adhesive residue off.  Magic Erasers are awesome.  Made cleaning her up way easier that I thought it would be.  Scrubbed the whole thing down afterward with Simple Green and she’s looking pretty nice.  There’s some fading on the cabinet and you can definitely tell where the old side art was, but the new side art should disguise that pretty well.

Next up, gutting the inside of the cabinet.  Gonna tear everything out, clean up the insides, then put in an original Donkey Kong board, power supply, and wiring harness.

My Christmas present came a little earlier than expected.  A Donkey Kong cabinet!  I was supposed to go pick it up on Sunday, but the guy was making a trip to Lincoln and was nice enough to bring it along.  She’s in very good shape for a 28 year old machine.  Right now it’s got some crappy Data East game in it, but the guy gave me almost everything I need to turn it back into a Donkey Kong, including new side art,  a control panel, and a monitor bezel.

She’s really dirty and full of mouse nests, but should clean up nicely.  Gonna try to take the old Nintendo VS side art off tonight and get the outside of the cab cleaned up.

I finished up my Multi-Williams cab just before Thanksgiving, so I thought I’d post a couple pictures of the finished product.

I got the marquee and control panel from arcadeoverlays.com.  The monitor bezel is from arcadeshop.com.  You can’t tell in the pictures, but the buttons are translucent.  I put LEDs under the control panel so all the buttons glow when the machine is on, which looks pretty cool.

Other than Joust and Defender, I hadn’t really played many Williams horizontal games before.  Bubbles and Splat didn’t do much for me, but Stargate, Sinistar, and Robotron are all great.  Robotron in particular really has me shoveling the tokens into the machine.  I’m also becoming quite the Defender addict.  It was always way too hard as a kid, but as an adult I can navigate it’s crazy button layout without as much trouble.