Donkey Kong Bartop Build [COMPLETED]

[Birdman042]

Donkey Kong is my son's favorite arcade game (raised him right!). The local Dave and Busters has a Donkey Kong/Mario Bros. combo machine and he always makes a bee line for that machine after we finish eating. One evening in May, they had taken the machine off the floor (turned out for some maintenance) and my son was devastated! His birthday is in September, so I figured I'd build him his own Donkey Kong machine for his 12th birthday. I based the design off the Jacobuds plans, scaled down to about 55% full size, then chopped it right below the speaker/admin panel.

I had a Raspberry Pi that I wasn't using and made it the brains of the machine. Started out prototyping with foam project board to get the general layout and control panel artwork. I was originally going to use a 7 inch LCD, but could not get the Pi to work with it in portrait mode. So I defaulted back to a 17inch Dell 4:3 with DVI input that I had laying around the house.

Once I had the general layout finalized, It was time to start cutting wood.

[Birdman042]

I wish I had taken more pictures for some of the initial cuts. Lets just say things didn't go well for the first attempt at cutting the sides. I will say I got pretty proficient with the router. Ruined my template with the trim bit (of course the cheap harbor freight router didn't help). Picked up a nice Ryobi router and I got the sides cut as smooth as butter.

The entire bartop was built using 3/4in MDF with the exception of the marque supports. I used small blocks of MDF as battens for internal support The artwork I did in Inkscape and GIMP. All of the buttons and controls I purchased from GroovyGamer.com. Everybody loves the "coin return" button.

I used kitchen cabinet magnets to hold the control panel down.

Of course I had some issues with clearance with the joystick switch connections and the speaker/admin panel. Dremel to the rescue.

[Birdman042]

Painted the interior surfaces with a Krylon 2 in 1 Flat Black spray paint. Figured that would be simpler than a brush, and quicker drying time.

The rear panel is held in place with two short dowels. The lock is a cabinet lock. The T-knob makes a nice place to hang the keys as well as hold the power cord when the unit is not plugged in.

I didn't paint around the monitor, I used foam weather stripping to hide the silver from the LCD.

[Birdman042]

Painted the sides using Behr Liquid Blue 520B-5 primer and paint. Three coats and it covered well.

The side art I had printed at Office Max (down the street from my workplace) on a poly impregnated heavy paper. I used 3M spray adhesive to affix it to the sides of the machine, then covered it with a clear coat.

The black button above the rear panel is a force shutdown for the Raspberry Pi. When it is pressed, it sends an immediate shutdown command to the Pi, allowing the system to safely unmount the filesystem. I refer to it as the "Time for bed switch". All of the controls are wired to the GPIO via the 40pin ribbon cable. The speaker is a mini USB powered speaker with a 3.5" jack input.

[Birdman042]

I used glass to cover the screen. The Marque and Control panel are covered with Lexian. The glass is wedged behind the control panel. It sits on the back of the magnets and has more of the black foam weather stripping holding it in place. I used T-molding to hold the upper glass in place along with the lower marque. The upper marque is held in place with a white plastic angled molding. It is friction fitted in place and doesn't budge with the marque plexi in place. I put a LED strip inside the marque with some of the same foam board I used to prototype the machine as a reflector. I have since made a faux Nintendo Label Plate using thin aluminium sheeting and clear label paper. It turned out pretty good.

The look of shock on my sons face when I gave him the machine was priceless. His jaw literally dropped! It was well worth all the time I spent making it for him. He later told me it was the best birthday present ever.

[harveybirdman]

Looking good!  This is only your second project?  nice.

[Birdman042]

Nope first build.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[Birdman042]

And the last couple of pictures showing the Label Plate and the rats nest of wiring..........

[05SRT4]

Its cool to hear the reaction your son had.

I can see why, this build is amazing.

[jond]

Hey that is a great job i love it would you be able to post the plans? That looks fantastic and pointers now that you made it for someone making one for the first time  i plan on making something after the holidays. Thanks looking forwards to see what you build next.

[Birdman042]

Here is the PDF of the modified side plan. I printed this out and then cut it out and placed it on the foam board; laid out where everything would go and realized that I needed to stretch the cabinet vertically to fit the monitor and have a decent sized marque  . That was all done in pencil on the MDF after. I knew where the base and Control Panels would go and where the Marque would be and just filled in the gaps by hand (and a straight edge/french curve). Other than this, it was all in my head. I knew what I wanted it to look like and very slowly worked towards that goal.

The Speaker opening, I printed out, properly scaled, then used the old pencil graphite rub to transfer it to the MDF and using my Dremel with a small router bit, routed out the cutouts.

The control panel art I purposely created longer than the panel to ensure I had edge to edge coverage.

Thank you all for the comments. I will say that all the awesome projects here were a definite influence and encouragement while I was building my son's machine.

[Brouhaha]

Congratulations. Looks real good! 

[Shortbus]

Excellent Work and Great back story! I did the same thing for my brother one year, it was all anyone talked about for months!

 

[Birdman042]

Thanks!

[Malenko]

This was your FIRST build?


I cannot wait to see the second. 

[Birdman042]

Well my second build started out as a variation of the Little Ms. Pacman for my son's friend. That project hit a slight ALL STOP when I damaged the original monitor (curse my butterfingers......) and had to do some modifications to fit the slightly smaller back-up monitor. Then the weather turned nasty here in the Tidewater Region (think Virginia Beach, Va area). (Temperatures would swing from the 20's and 30's one day to the 60's the next, then follow that up with 1-2 inches of snow with temperatures in the 20's.......) Once the weather starts to settle down again, I'll be able to start cutting and routing outside again.

 In the meantime, I have been working with one of Haruman's awesome Ultimate Widescreen kits. That one I am going with a West Virginia Mountaineers theme. Blue and Gold metallic balltops, LED buttons.

[HaRuMaN]

   Excellent!

[Birdman042]

Those pictures were taken last month after I had a barrel hinge blowout on the control panel  . Much language and lots of TLC/Gorilla Glue to rebuild the recess.

[BDS]

Mind if I ask you where you purchased the LED buttons for Haruman's ultimate widescreen kit? I was thinking on using LED buttons as wel for the same kit.

[Birdman042]

Mind if I ask you where you purchased the LED buttons for Haruman's ultimate widescreen kit? I was thinking on using LED buttons as wel for the same kit.

They are Ultimarc Ultralux RGB.