Hi all,
I just wanted to share some pics of the dedicated Donkey Kong I picked up from eBay. The side art, t-molding and instruction cards clearly need to be replaced.
The laminate on the sides is in decent (but not great) shape and has several spots that will need touch up. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do... it seems a shame to just paint over it given it's in mostly good condition, but the spots that are bad are noticeable.
The marquee and bezel artwork is in pretty good shape but the monitor plexi has scratches in it. I'll have to see if I can get rid of the scratches somehow or if I need to just replace the whole bezel.
The coin door has the typical nasty credit button shoe-horned into it and seems to be missing the metal "supports" that hold a returned coin. Some of the wires were snipped for some reason, so I'll have to work on that. It's missing the drawer that holds the coins and didn't come with keys, so that's something else I'll need to figure out.
The joystick appears to have an 8-way restrictor plate installed. It's in okay (again not great) shape, so I'll need to figure out whether I should find a 4-way restrictor to replace it with or replace the whole stick. The buttons need replacing since it looks like 2 of them have had their edges melted with a soldering iron. The CP artwork is in good shape but the plexi is discolored in several spots and will probably need replacement.
Monitor looks good and has clearly been recapped. I noticed some minor sparkling during the intro sequence but nothing during the game. Sound is good with a little background buzz (need to find the volume control and turn it down though!).
So, all in all, there's a bit of work to do to this machine, but I'm excited to get going on it!
Any comments or suggestions are welcome!
->Dan