Early TKG-3 Upright Donkey Kong in Blue

Holy crap, thank you for posting this.

Several months ago this machine was on Craigslist (along with the Battlezone and the Pac Man - $900 as a lot, and at the time he seemed to want to sell ONLY as a lot), before I'd gotten my Donkey Kong. It had the typical "Craigslist quality" image, so I couldn't really see much detail in terms of the good the bad and the ugly. It burned me inside with curiosity.

Ever since I got the machine that I got (which ended up being about $300 after expenses), I've been wondering about "the one that got away." Seeing it now with full-resolution images is the ultimate itch-scratch.

I can't say I regret my choice. I'd have had to replace the board in here with a TKG-4, for one thing. On the other hand, while this cabinet needs more repairs and cosmetic fixes than mine did, the fewer things that are wrong with mine (water damage) are less repairable.

At $300 this would have been a decent deal. Even at $400 it's not bad. From the looks of things, a restoration wouldn't be too hard.
 
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Question/suspicion: why does it have the extra (ie, vertical mount) monitor holes in the cab? Weren't the additional holes a post-DK thing?

I bet it was converted at one point than de-converted back to DK, no other good reason to drill those holes other than a horizontal monitor setup.
 
Weird. It seems to me that only a collector (as opposed to an operator back in the day) would ever do a de-conversion. Why would an operator, who's thinking from the business/profit perspective (ie, "new game is better"), go DK, to Popeye/Mario/Vs., then back to DK again?

Can't argue with my eyes though...
 
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