Donkey Kong cocktail

May and June have been extremely busy for me, so I didn't have much time for this hobby. That is, until now!

I was visiting a customer when I got a phone call from a friend, saying that an original Donkey Kong cab had been spotted at a local auction. I obviously wasn't free to talk there and then, but I called him up immidiately after leaving the customer.

I must admit that I didn't really believe him. People tend to say things like "an original blablah" when it's just some brown veneered generic JAMMA cab with a bootleg board. Still, we decided to visit the auction, which was being held the very same afternoon.

Sure enough, it was an original Donkey Kong. But not the upright I expected, it was a cocktail! Never in my wildest dreams had I thought that I would find something like this just a 5 minutes drive from home.

After sitting through hundreds of useless items, from silverware to old cassette tapes, the time had finally come to the DK. My pulse must have been close to 200 when the auctioneer announced it, and asked if anyone was willing to pay the mimimum price. I raised my hand, and feared that someone else would also start bidding. Much to my surprise, no-one did. It seemed like an eternity before the club hit the table, and I was the happy owner of one of my favourite games!

As I paid (what I find a very reasonable sum), the seller told me it was working, and that it had previously been on route in my home town. This was the first game machine they ever sold at this auction house.

I wish they had more of them! Donkey Kong came from a very big and well-known op, and they surely must have had hundreds of arcade machines.

The monitor was a bit weak in the beginning, but now it's close to perfect. The whole cabinet is in quite good shape. One of the balltops has been changed, and some buttons are missing. Luckily, it's all available online.

I know that the vectorized instructions are available for free, but I found someone selling them on eBay. It's cheaper than what I could have made locally, so I ordered a set yesterday.

My wife is away on holiday for six weeks, but I guess she will find out eventually. Honey, if you are reading this, it's not mine. I'm just keeping it for a friend! :-)

Beating the bride

I was expecting visitors, and played a couple of Bride of Pinbot rounds to kill time. I have a (quite rare) diamond plated BoP at home, but I haven't gotten around to shopping it yet.

Anyway, I was having a great second ball, joining the billionaires club and still retaining one of the balls, when the doorbell rang! I was forced to let the ball drain and end the game so I could entertain the guests.

Sometimes I wish these machines had a pause button..

(For those of you who ask why I didn't play the last ball after the guests left: They also wanted to try the game..)

..and the plunger is back on

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had troubles finding the right screws for Magic Castle's plunger mount. It turned out they were just standard US threads, and I actually found a pack of brand new screws in a rack mounting kit at work. It's nice getting something for free for a change!

New hiscore!

I joined the billionaires club again! I was actually already a member, but I had since removed the batteries from my BOP, and all the scores reset.

Although I'm no Tommy, I'm getting noticably better. The metamorphosis used to be something  impossible for me to achieve (I think I did it one time since 2003), but the last couple of weeks I have consistently gotten the metamorphosis at least every third game.

Broken post

I won an eBay auction for a Magic Castle backglass. The seller was from Austria, and I sent him some e-mails in (my quite basic) german. 

I tried to make sure that he would pack it properly, and that he had actually shipped a backglass before, and he assured me that it would be safe, in many layers of styrofoam. This didn't quite comfort me, as I would want a wooden board in there, but in the end I just had to take his word for it.

Sadly, it arrived broken.

I didn't find the packaging to be satisfactory, with just a couple of thin layers of styrofoam inside a quite flimsy flatscreen tv cardboard box. In fact, I was quite nervous that the Post would feel the same way, and refuse to refund the costs, but they were ok with it.

The 170 USD are back in my account, but I still don't have a backglass. It's quite sad actually.. I'm sure there aren't that many left of them out there, and now there's one less.