Donkey Kong 3 Arcade Cabinet Restoration/Mod
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Here are some photos of my most current full size arcade cabinet build. This is an original 1982 Donkey Kong 3 arcade cabinet. I have had this cabinet for over 25 years. My dad bought it for us when we were younger from a guy he worked with for next to nothing and we loved playing it. Of course several years ago it stopped working it got moved into my parents barn. When I found out about retropie on the Raspberry Pie i decided it was time to do a restomod!
Unfortunately i am traveling and didn't get any photos of the sides of the machine before leaving. Please also forgive the mess in the background! The yellow players coin button has a bad LED that I need to replace as well. It was dead on arrival.
What I did was gut the cabinet removed the old 1 player control panel. I built the new 4 player control panel and bolted it to the cabinet. I have a 21" 4:3 LED monitory installed. 4 player LED easyget usb controls that show up as dragon rise controls. I am using a powered usb hub from pi hut to power the controls and LED. The marque light is a new LED fixture powered independently. I have 3.5m jack with speakers and a sub woofer also powered separately. I have use the joystick selection script by @meleu to assign each controller to always act as the player i want, and it works perfectly. I have a 6 button setup with a start and select button. I have a coin button set up for each player as well. The coin button is set as
left thumbin the controller setup so i can easily assign it in retroarch. I still have to set up custom controls for each game, but so far it is working perfectly. The screensaver function built in by @pjft looks awesome. I also have an original 4 player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade machine (actually a real jama board with crt monitor) and this retropie build fits in with it nicely!
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@TMNTturtlguy What should I say? Awesome!
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Looks great!
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@cyperghost Thanks! Thanks for all your help on my questions and scripts as well. All that work was so i could have this setup running without a keyboard and not hooked up to the internet. I wanted to get everything running and customizable from the menus using just the joysticks, and so far so good!
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what is the viewing angle like for the people playing on the edges?
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@spruce_m00se pretty good actually. It is not prefect like my TMNT 4 player cabinet, but those 4 player cabinets are a different style. I wanted to keep the original bezel and shape of this cabinet, so the 3rd and 4th players do lose a small sliver of the edge of the screen, not really enough to effect game play in anyway.
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@TMNTturtlguy is it a crt or LED?
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@spruce_m00se Per OP - 21" 4:3 LED in this cabinet.
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@TMNTturtlguy sweet, assumedly there is no issue with the view angle on the monitor itself? it looks sweet, Im not sure I would have done it though, I think I would have restored it to its working glory. Did you mod it in such a way that you can put it back?
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@spruce_m00se There are no issues with viewing angle of the monitor, it is a fancy NEC display and i was lucky enough to find it as a factory refurbished for a fraction of the original cost, it is beautiful.
As for the arcade machine itself. I have all the original parts and pieces. I had previously fixed this machine several times. I had fixed the original 19" crt 2 times, this last time it actually just went out, no fixing it. So i would have to get another 19" crt, not cheap. The pcb board itself is also shot, i would have to get a new board. The only thing i did to this cabinet is put 4 holes through the body for the carriage bolts to hold the new 4 player control panel. If i want to go back to the original, i just remove that, use some putty/bondo to fill in the holes and put the crt monitor mounts back in. I left all the wiring and power supplies intact. I can guarantee I will never go back though. The novelty of these wears off pretty fast. Like I said, i have had this machine for 20+ years and only playing donkey kong 3 isn't that great. I spend enough keeping my 4 player TMNT cabinet running as it is!
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@TMNTturtlguy its a franken-cade!! Noce job. It does hurt seeing a nintendo cabinet modded that much. I did take a donkey kong 1&jr arcade and put a 60 in 1 icade board, a 19 flat crt monitor, and a new donkey kong jr control panel that i added one extra button and a spinner to. If you ever want to go back to something i do have a working donkey kong mobo that i took out of a donkey kong cocktail table that i modified that you could have. I do have a dk jr marquee that i got autographed by steve weibe.
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@edmaul69 cool! Sounds like you also have a nice setup! Just to clarify, I do have all the original parts and I removed the control panel and i am making a stand to set on top of the machine to display it. The only mods I made to the cabinet are 4 holes to attach the new control panel that I can easily patch. I intentionally built this build to retain the original cabinet. With this new build my kids will get a ton more use out of the machine. If anything goes wrong with it it is now much more cost effective to fix as well.
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@TMNTturtlguy if you ever need to make the screen more viwable there is a company that makes new nintendo cabinets. They also sell blank smoked glass for them. You can buy the glass seperate.
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@edmaul69 can you send me the company info/website? Thanks!
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@TMNTturtlguy i will try to find it. Been a while.
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@TMNTturtlguy you can also buy a piece of plexi or glass and tint the inside of the plexi or glass.
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@TMNTturtlguy also if you google search for playchoice 10 glass you probably can find it. The playchoice 10 arcades didnt have bezel art on the glass
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