Donkey Kong (1981 Nintendo)
Click on Marquee for KLOV listing.
The Story: I won’t go into the typical, already been said a million times "schpeal" on DK, so I’ll just share my childhood memories of it. In 6th grade, I was enrolled in an after school latchkey program at the Lutheran school I was attending at the time. 2 things they had that I will never forget was a ping pong table and a Donkey Kong arcade game with a wide open coin door. While the game was already almost 10 years old at this point, it was the first time I had seen or played the arcade version. I had previously enjoyed it on the NES and Atari. I would spend hours on the DK machine. There was just some "charm" about playing the arcade game, maybe the nice artwork, enhanced graphics and the "pie factory" level that the NES game lacked contributed to that charm. I don’t know. But I sure enjoyed playing it. The machine broke down shortly before my 6th grade year ended and the game simply became a faded memory for years to come. I never thought I'd actually own one almost 20 years later.
The Score: Found on KC Craigslist listed as fully working for $300. That was a bargain in itself, but it never hurts to ask "is the price firm?". I got it for $260 and made a 5 hour round trip. The game was described as working and in good condition with the exception of a sound issue. And it was no lie. This game looks like it has a brand new bezel, nice control panel, new T-Molding and new side art. The Sharp brand 20" monitor appears to be fairly new and has a perfect picture with no burn. No sound as mentioned. The only other flaw I noticed was that the paint job wasn't the greatest. The paint was uneven and it wasn't the proper shade of blue.
The Service: The sound issue was simply an improperly wired speaker. A quick 2-minute fix and the sound has worked perfect ever since. The monitor was missing a support bracket at the top. Thank goodness this particular monitor has a cage around the neck, I might have been in for a not-so-pleasant surprise after the unload if that weren’t the case. I fabricated a new support out of unistrut and L-brackets. As with most games I find, the marquee lamp wasn’t working, so I replaced it with a new one. The joystick was an aftermarket 8-way, so I replaced that with an original Nintendo 4-way joystick. I have also added the infamous "D2K kit" to this game. It not only features high score save and free play with attract mode, but it also includes a second game called Donkey Kong II - Jumpman Returns. Nice.
A new paint job would soon be in store for this game. Since I added a Donkey Kong Jr. to my collection, I now had 3 games in "Nintendo Row" and decided they should each have their own colors. Since I was going to be stripping the blue paint from this game, I decided that it would look great in "Radar Scope" red. This is the same shade of red that the early runs of DK came in when Nintendo was recycling their Radar Scope cabinets. Anyway, I began stripping the paint and quickly noticed that whoever painted it last did absolutely no prep work. No wonder the paint job was sub-par. The original formica wasn't even sanded down. Well one positive to this laziness is that the paint came off pretty easily. From there, all I had to do was carefully apply painter's tape to the side art, sand down the cabinet and paint it. It came out looking great. Not perfect, but very nice. It may not be born red, but its good enough for me.
The Score: Found on KC Craigslist listed as fully working for $300. That was a bargain in itself, but it never hurts to ask "is the price firm?". I got it for $260 and made a 5 hour round trip. The game was described as working and in good condition with the exception of a sound issue. And it was no lie. This game looks like it has a brand new bezel, nice control panel, new T-Molding and new side art. The Sharp brand 20" monitor appears to be fairly new and has a perfect picture with no burn. No sound as mentioned. The only other flaw I noticed was that the paint job wasn't the greatest. The paint was uneven and it wasn't the proper shade of blue.
The Service: The sound issue was simply an improperly wired speaker. A quick 2-minute fix and the sound has worked perfect ever since. The monitor was missing a support bracket at the top. Thank goodness this particular monitor has a cage around the neck, I might have been in for a not-so-pleasant surprise after the unload if that weren’t the case. I fabricated a new support out of unistrut and L-brackets. As with most games I find, the marquee lamp wasn’t working, so I replaced it with a new one. The joystick was an aftermarket 8-way, so I replaced that with an original Nintendo 4-way joystick. I have also added the infamous "D2K kit" to this game. It not only features high score save and free play with attract mode, but it also includes a second game called Donkey Kong II - Jumpman Returns. Nice.
A new paint job would soon be in store for this game. Since I added a Donkey Kong Jr. to my collection, I now had 3 games in "Nintendo Row" and decided they should each have their own colors. Since I was going to be stripping the blue paint from this game, I decided that it would look great in "Radar Scope" red. This is the same shade of red that the early runs of DK came in when Nintendo was recycling their Radar Scope cabinets. Anyway, I began stripping the paint and quickly noticed that whoever painted it last did absolutely no prep work. No wonder the paint job was sub-par. The original formica wasn't even sanded down. Well one positive to this laziness is that the paint came off pretty easily. From there, all I had to do was carefully apply painter's tape to the side art, sand down the cabinet and paint it. It came out looking great. Not perfect, but very nice. It may not be born red, but its good enough for me.
