Multi Donkey Kong
Manufactured by Nintendo (c)1981, 1982, 1983
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Condition When Purchased:
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B-
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Current Condition:
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A
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This multi-kong cabinet has been with me since the beginning…almost. It was the 4th cabinet I bought and only the 2nd since I got hooked on original arcade machines. I will warn you though, as pretty as she is on the outside … she holds a deep dark secret. One that I refuse to run from … and take full credit for. I did the unholiest of deeds to this cabinet (keep your minds out of the gutter now)… I JAMMAtized it. I know… I know… my only defese is that it was done before I knew any better.
The cabinet was a Donkey Kong Jr. cabinet. Physically it was in good shape. It did need new side art, new T-Molding, and the monitor needed to be rebuilt as there was severe jail-bars… plus the picture was somewhat shrunk on the right side I believe it was. It was solid and thankfully it was a plywood version from Japan. Knowing that I wanted to drop a 60-in-1 in to this machine (again, forgive me!) I stripped the original PCB, original harness and re-capped the Sanyo 20EZ. I wired the cabinet for JAMMA, installed a new switcher and dropped a 60-in-1 in. I wanted to theme it as a Multi-Kong but at the time the best I could find was a Double Donkey Kong marquee. I also knew I wanted to go full multi by mixing up the artwork between Donkey Kong's and Donkey Kong Jr.s. I decided on going with Donkey Kong side art on one side, Jr's art on the other. I also stuck with Jr's bezel but decided to pick up a Donkey Kong repro control panel overlay. Origially I stuck custom 60-in-1 "marquee" art in the control panel "instruction" area, but since have switched it to custom "Multi Kong" artwork only showing the 5 games currently running in the cabinet. The stick is the authentic Nint
endo stick (rebuilt) and the T-Molding is the "flat" stuff that Audiomidiman (I believe it was) released a few years back. I want to say I picked the side art up from Mikes Arcade and I THINK the control panel overlay is from the same source. The marquee is lit with a Wally World under the counter special as the original was dead and I was new to the hobby and simply replaced it rather than fix it. Again, I HAVE LEARNED since then.
After a few months I realized just how much the 60-in-1 sucked, plus I was not happy that it didn't save high scores and initial, etc. I saved up my coin and picked up an Arcadeshop PCB. For a while I played all the games the Arcadeshop PCB offered until I eventually (a few years later) built my Multipede upright using the ArcadeSD PCB. When I did that I decided to run only the 5 Nintendo Donkey Kong games. Well, four + Mario Bros. So currently the games running in the cabinet are Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong 2 (Jeffs hack that adds 4 new levels to DK!), Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong Jr. and Mario Bros. I did eventually manage to find a Multi Donkey Kong marquee which I purchased and replaced the Double Donkey Kong one I had before. The games all play great. The only complaint I have is that Donkey Kong 3 is missing two sounds … which I've reported to the ArcadeSD folks but I'm not holding my breath they will ever get to fixing it. All high scores save (which is a bonus for me)… and the games look and sound right (especially compared the to 60-in-1).
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