Lutus' Donkey Kong resurrection from DK3 oblivion

[Lutus]

This is my first post in Project Announcements and it is also my first restoration.  I bought a Donkey Kong 3 cabinet off a guy in my hometown.  As you can tell from the before pictures,  it was missing one side of the sideart, the other side was banged up.  Someone had put fat, black t-molding on and then tried to use a pocket knife or something to shape it down to the 9/16 needed for these nintendo cabs.  Inside the cabinet the guy said he found a Donkey Kong original service manual.  He was confused but I sure wasn't.

I took it off of his hands and went about restoring it to it's Donkey Kong glory.  Here is the rundown of the things I have done.  (In order no less...)


BEFORE: see attached photos

-Stripped old sideart
-Removed all Donkey Kong 3 stuff (marquee, bezel, control panel)
-Bought Donkey Kong marquee, bezel, sideart, t-molding, and locks from arcadeshop.com
-Bought a pre-assembled Donkey Kong control panel from Mike's Arcade (very nice btw)
-Bought nintendo blue paint (using color code on the forums) and flat black from Lowe's


Now to start restoring...

When you do your own restore, don't leave the coin door on when you paint the exterior like I did initially, take it off.

This is what I did in a nutshell...

-Sand off the "sheen" of the formica siding
-Two coats of primer  over the sanded formica
-Three coats of nintendo blue, lightly sanding between coats
-Removed upper marquee holder bracket and coin door
-Spray painted the upper marquee bracket and the coin door black
-Painted the top, back, trim around the control panel and bezel, and the bottom skirting flat black
-Installed new marquee, bezel, control panel, white t-molding
-Reinstalled coin door, and upper marquee holder

The end result is fantastic in my opinion escpecially since I have never painted anything but walls before.  The monitor does work in this cabinet but I will be installing a computer and interfacing to the monitor to play games like Donkey Kongs, Galaga, Galaxian, Pac-Man... etc...

I will put up a link to the monitor thread once I get everything worked out on what I am going to do in that regard.

I will also put up the "after" photos when I get home from work today.  EDIT: Pics on next post.

I would like to thank the following board members and vendors who have helped tremendously in this adventure:

-97thruhiker (check out his donkey kong restoration as well... http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=56041.0)

-http://www.mikesarcade.com/cgi-bin/store.pl?sku=CPDKONG

-http://www.arcadeshop.com/parts.htm

Thanks for looking!

TODO list:  Apply sideart, install computer

[Lutus]

Place holder post for "after" pics

[Lutus]

more...

[97thruhiker]

Looks great  .  I had to give it a second look as I thought it was my cabinet when I first saw your picture.  I love the Nintendo style cabinet, its the perfect size to keep in the living / family room.  Now one of us needs to restore a Donkey Kong Jr or Mario Brothers cabinet  .

[theCoder]

Oh, if only I could get back a fraction of the quarters I fed into the Donkey Kong machine they had at my first pizza job. Control panels (and financial decisions) were much simpler back then.

I wonder how many one button games are out there that you can run on it. 

Nice job.

[Lutus]

97thruhiker, funny you should say that, there is a working Dr. Mario cab here in town at a car wash.  I am trying to convince the guy to sell it to me .

Coder, there are a couple forums out there that have asked the age old question of "how many 4-way 1 button games are there..."  I'll let you know my final list.