I’m going to try and keep this a little more upto date than this. I’ll go with monthly updates as there can be quite big gaps between purchases.

Since getting into this hobby, I have amassed quite of lot of parts with clear intentions of what I need them for. Before I’d imported my first Nintendo upright, I’d started buying all the internals to create a replica, but after finding the brilliant import service offered by a couple of fellow forum dwellers, things changed (not completely, as the parts I’d bought allowed me to de-convert the .vs Unisystems I’d imported).

I won’t start going back through all of my historical purchases as we’d be here all week, so I’ll cover off May and June deliveries.

The first purchase was from a fellow forum member and is quite a rare beast:

A Nintendo HeliFire cocktail. HeliFire was released by Nintendo in 1980, the year before Donkey Kong was released. Unfortunately for HeliFire, it wasn’t a very popular game and as such there aren’t that many of them (I know of 5 complete cocktails worldwide including mine). This one is complete and in lovely condition considering it’s 37 years old! Now the game doesn’t work fully at the moment (I get the sea and the starry night sky, but no sprites), so the board is off for repair. I will be fully stripping this cabinet down and restoring it to it’sformer glory.

My second purchase was from Richie Knucklez (owner of the Richie Knucklez Arcade and star of The King of Arcades). Richie runs an annual Donkey Kong tournament in the US called Kong Off and each year creates full custom artwork packages for the DK arcades. I picked up a “Kong Off 3” marquee from a US forum member a couple of years ago and then started buying direct from Richie. As I’d started with KO3, I was missing the original Kong Off and KO2. Richie was going through and selling some old inventory, so I managed to snag a KO2 marquee. As I’d spent a number of years chatting to Richie, he sent me a surprise with my marquee:

A second KO2 marquee! The one I’d bought was the signed one, but Richie also threw in one of his prototype prints as well! Only Kong Off to find…

Next up was a little (but costly) eBay purchase. The HeliFire cocktail above that I claimed was “complete”, was aside from the coin box. They don’t pop up very often, so when I saw one pop up on eBay in the US, I hit the Buy It Now button:

Now HeliFire is complete!

Next delivery came from a Facebook group and a girl called Jenn in Florida. She was breaking a Nintendo cocktail that had been crudely converting into .vs Super Mario Bros. This resulted in a butchered control panel as it needed an additional button:

Interestingly, all these cocktail control panels are fully wired up for this additional button, so all that was needed was the button itself and a neatly cut hole… one out of two isn’t bad I suppose! As I’d bought this for spare buttons and  joysticks, I wasn’t overly bothered about the aesthetics anyway. I also got from Jenn a genuine Takigen key (you can never have too many) and the serial plate off the cocktail (Donkey Kong Jr).

Next up, another delivery from Richie:

The CD has a load of Richie’s tracks on from his band and now lives in my car. This marquee completed the set!

That concludes May and June’s deliveries. I’ll start working on the July and August post (some really unusual parts to show off!)