The Unrestored Coin Door

I was really lucky when I went to pick up this cabinet - the coin door was in excellent shape! It is the only thing on a Donkey Kong cabinet that you can't buy a reproduction of (to my knowledge) so in order to get everything looking factory fresh you have to find an original and restore it. The problem is that over time they tend to get bent out of shape due to people trying to break in and they all rust due to age and less than ideal storage conditions.

Check out the coin door that came with the cabinet (I still can't believe it was only $36!):

As you can see, the paint is chipping all over the place and there is a considerable amount of rust. However, there are no dents! It is in great shape and once I strip off all of the old paint and rust I can prime and repaint it and the coin door will look brand new! I hope...

Here is a shot of behind the coin door:

The original wiring harness is still there (I'm probably not going to use it) and if you look really close you can see the coin counter!

The coin counter is set to 31,071 which means that while this cabinet was in service it made $7,767.75. Not too bad considering that amount is a quarter at a time! I'm going to look into resetting the coin counter for when I put the finished cabinet in my house so I can keep track of how many games I've played - it's a pretty neat feature.

The next pictures are close-ups of the actual coin mechs:

There are not in great shape and the finish has completely worn down around the coin slot. I'm not sure if I'll be able to restore these to factory condition so I'm contemplating replacing them with similar looking coin mechs from Asahi Seiko. They look like this:

Notice the coin catcher on the bottom is slightly different (the "U" shape vs. the "ear" shape on the original). I'm really undecided right now - they are expensive at $40 each but sure would look nice!

Here are some more pictures of my coin door (yeah, it's overkill but what else am I going to do with them?):

More later.

Random Close-Ups

Here are a few more pictures to give you a better idea of where I'm starting. There are a lot of places which will need to be touched up or filled with bondo and then sanded down before I apply the first coat of primer.

Here is a shot of the speaker grill. The original Donkey Kong only had one speaker mounted on the left underneath the control panel. The sound escapes through the slots that are cut out as you can see. There is minor damage here (chipping) that I will fill with the bondo - the tricky part will be sanding it down evenly. Check out the t-molding slot on the left. It is in great shape!

This next shot shows the other side of the control panel area but this time from above. Unfortunately this cabinet did not come with a control panel at all so I will have to recreate that completely from scratch. It did, however, come with the control panel clips as you can see in the picture. These are what is used to secure the control panel in place.

The last shot below is the marquee area. The hole in the back panel is for the power cord for the light that goes behind the marquee. I am most likely going to be using a NovaMatrix LED Light from GroovyGameGear here instead of a florescent one. The bulbs last way longer and they are easier to power. Along the bottom edge you can also see the metal retainer (it's oxidized over time) which is used to secure the bottom of the marquee and the top of the bezel in place. I'll have to clean that up somehow and repaint it.

More later!

From This To ... ???

After getting the cabinet home, I took a bunch of pictures (both inside and out) so I can have something to compare the finished product to and to track my progress. The cabinet is in decent shape but there is a lot of work to be done to get it looking like it just came out of the factory.

Here are a few shots of the entire cabinet from several angles to give you an idea of what I'm going to be working with. The existing side art will have to come off first.

The next shot shows the cabinet from the other side - the side art is already peeling off! Maybe I'll get lucky and it will come off easily.

I don't know if you can see but there are multiple holes punched through both sides that will have to be patched. It appears as though this cabinet was converted from a Donkey Kong to a Nintendo Vs. cabinet at some point. The vertical Donkey Kong monitor would have to be turned on its side (or replaced) because the Nintendo Vs. games all ran on two(!) horizontal monitors stacked on top of one another. The holes are for the various supports for the monitors. The original Donkey Kong cab had two bolts on each side in order to support a monitor bracket - right through the side art! Even though I'm going for authenticity, I think I'm going to make some minor design "improvements" along the way and this will be one of them - no bolts through the side panels!

Finally, here is a shot of the back of the cabinet. I really should take some head-on pictures of the front and back but this will have to do for now. You can see the two holes cut out near the top - this was for transporting it around. There are two casters on the bottom so all you have to do is tip it back onto the wheels and grab it by the two openings. It is quite easy to move around.

I will post some close-up shots later but I can already tell that the back part is going to be the toughest to restore - plus, the back door was missing when I picked it up so I'll have to make an entirely new one!

More later.

Getting Some Help

Over the holidays I asked my dad if he wanted to help me restore the Donkey Kong and he agreed! He is very handy and I think it will be a lot of fun to spend time working together. We are planning to set aside a few Saturdays in the Spring once the weather gets better. The first steps will be:

1. Fill all holes on the exterior and sand
2. Mask off sides and front and paint interior black
3. Apply 3-4 coats of white primer (sanding in between)
4. Apply 2 top coats of powder blue paint (sanding in between)

Once all that is finished we will be well on our way. I can't wait to get started!

Back Door Operation Sheet

Since I'm going for authenticity I will be including the "Back Door Operation Sheet" that was stapled to the inside of the back door of an original Donkey Kong cabinet. Here is a pic of what it looks like:

I'm not sure if I'll be using the same monitor or even running a Donkey Kong board on the inside so the operation sheet might be a little misleading but hey, no one will know except me... the goal is to restore the cabinet to be as "authentic" as possible so every little detail matters...

Board or Computer?

I haven't decided how I am going to run Donkey Kong on the cabinet once it is complete. I could:

1. Get an original DK board and install it
2. Get a "48-1" board and install it (includes DK among others)
3. Put an old computer inside and run MAME. I can set it up to boot straight to DK when turned on so it would appear dedicated but also have it run every 4-way/1 button game out there (DK, DK Jr., DK3, Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, Pac-man Jr., Mr. Do!, Frogger, etc. - there are TONs of them and most are classics).
   

I'm leaning towards #3 because it's the cheapest and easiest since I already have a couple of old computers laying around. It's not really necessary though since I have other machines running those games... I guess I'll make that call once I'm finished restoring the exterior of the cabinet.

Red or Blue?

I am undecided on what color to paint the cabinet once I'm done filling all of the holes, sanding it down and applying a few coats or primer. Most Donkey Kong cabinets came in powdered blue - in fact, the cabinet I am restoring was powder blue at one point and the only Donkey Kong cabinets I can recall from my youth were all powder blue. However, the first batch of Donkey Kong cabinets actually came in a deep red because they were converted from another Nintendo game - Radar Scope - which failed miserably.

Check it out:

The only reason I am considering red is purely for aesthetics - I just like the way it looks. I am really undecided at this point although I'm leaning towards blue because that is how I remember it...