Edited 8/6/2008 to correct the “official” color.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I am planning to convert an old Donkey Kong cabinet into a dedicated Donkey Kong 2 (D2K) cabinet. I just finished my Tron, so I am now ready to proceed with another restoration project. I expect to receive my pre-ordered artwork from This Old Games by the end of the month, so I’d better get this project moving! There is a great discussion going on right now on the KLOV Boards debating which cabinet colors would be favorites for the new D2K cabinets. The maker of the D2K upgrade, Jeff Kulczycki, decided on a darker blue color for cabinets that will be built as a dedicated D2K machine. I’ve always thought that Nintendo had a different approach to their cabinet color choices. They generally used a secondary color from the artwork as the cabinet base color. Rarely did they use one of the primary colors in the artwork. Following their previous cabinets, I wanted to see which color I thought would be a better fit. I made a few quick images to compare and contrast the different colors, and here is what I came up with.

Sapphire Sparkle (the “Official” color):

Purple:

Yellow-Gold (My favorite!):

Red:

I really like how the Yellow/Gold color looks. It does a great job of complimenting the colors in the D2K artwork. What do you think? Submit your vote in my Poll over to the right. I’ll likely keep “official” and do the dark blue, but it’s fun to think about it.

Just a quick note to mention that I received my replacement D2K kit. Tried it out, and it works perfectly. I’m going to play it for a week or so, then post a review of the kit and the game itself here on my blog.

I’ve only done one other Multi-game kit review so far, for Clay Cowgill’s Multi-Pac. Just reposted it on my site. Check back soon for more reviews, including D2K!

Just received my Donkey Kong 2 (D2K) kit last night from Arcadeshop. It is fantastic! For those of you that have not heard of the game, it is a new game programmed for original Donkey Kong hardware by Jeff Kulczycki, of Jeff’s Romhack. Jeff has done a fantastic job with this game. It is TOUGH! I’ve only completed the first screen so far, but will be spending some quality time checking out all of the screens.

The kit to add this to an existing Donkey Kong board is made up of a Braze Technologies High Score Save and Diagnostics Kit with custom programmed ROMS. The kit can be purchased exclusively through Arcadeshop. If you own a Donkey Kong, you MUST get this kit. The kit not only plays D2K, it still will play the original Donkey Kong. It also saves high scores and adds a Freeplay mode for both games. There is even a set of full cabinet artwork for this version of the game currently under production, so you will be able to make your own dedicated D2K cabinet! I plan to pick up some of this artwork and make one myself sometime soon.

I did have one problem with the kit. The diagnostics at the boot screen show that my high score save is ‘BAD’. I still have to call Arcadeshop to discuss this with them. I’m sure it’s either a chip reseating, or a replacement kit required from Arcadeshop. It still plays at this point, but doesn’t save my settings or high scores.

Here are some pictures:

New kit pcb before installation

New kit pcb installed

Boot screen showing save error

A couple shots of the game in action: