I'm mostly a lurker around here keeping tabs on all of your collections, but given that you guys seem to be fans of the robots, I swung by to see if any of you had heard it yet. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm2YD2AbZsE

I love that this could have been on 'Thriller' and it would have felt completely natural. Not what I expected at all, but I love it.
A radio station here in Seattle debuted it tonight and they played it back-to-back three times due to requests.   

So the other night, I was looking on Craigslist and came across a post for "Arcade game machines". Well, I always look just to see what things local people have (which usually isn't much), but this one had "broken Donkey Kong" tagged on the end of it. I know my friend Stacy (codepoet82) is always on the lookout for a Donkey Kong and the price was only $250, so I tell him he should go buy it. The seller says he doesn't know if it's the monitor or the PCB that's causing the trouble. I bet Stacy that it's the monitor and, given the shape of the cabinet, he might be able to have a working DK for around $500-$600. (Which around here isn't super great or super bad, but we just don't see DKs that much.) The next morning, Stacy calls the seller and talks to him. After drinking a little too much the night before ( ), I'm asleep on Stacy's couch and wake up to... a pillow in the face.

"WAKE UP! WE GOTTA GO GET THE DONKEY KONG!"

I'm awake in ten seconds.  

I run upstairs to wake Stacy's roommate Levi (conecrusher) up. Neither of us got very much sleep the night before, but he gets the same treatment.

"LEVI! WAKE UP! WE GOTTA GO GET THE DONKEY KONG!"

Levi's awake in five seconds. The bastard beat my time.  

So Stacy...



...Levi...



...the trusty Ford Ranger and I are just about ready to go.



Make sure we have the straps...



The odometer right before we leave:



[UPDATED: And the map of our journey. The blue is what idiot Mapquest recommended. The red is the path we actually took. ]



And off we go...



Levi's first cigarette of the day.



Stacy wondering why I am taking a thousand pictures with his Blackberry. I tell him "FOR THE POST I WILL WRITE ON DRAGON'S LAIR FANS! WE NEED TO SHOW THE BELGIANS AND GERMANS AND BRITS WHAT IT'S LIKE ON THIS SIDE OF THE ATLANTIC!" For the rest of the day, this is shortened to "FOR THE BELGIANS!", which Levi and I yell every time someone asks why we're taking pictures...  



We have to make a quick stop...



...at the ATM.



Stacy pulls out $240 from the ATM. He needs $10 more, because they only dispense in $20 increments. He asks Levi if he has $10 on him...



...which he does. One five and five ones. A miracle, if you know Levi.   So we hit the road again...



...see the seller's car (which he has parked on the road so we can fit the truck in)...



...and we have more than enough room.



In the garage, we find the JUMPMAN JACKPOT!  



On the other side of Altered Beast...



...and on the other (blurry) side of Ninja Gaiden.



But back to what we came for. This is the problem with the DK:



The seller is unsure if it's the monitor or the PCB. Stacy's seen this before with his Pac-Man and we tell the seller it's most likely the monitor. Right next to DK is DEVESTATORS...



...which none of us have played before. Levi wants to try it...



...so we plug it in and start playing.



The seller's young son is P1 and Levi is P2...





The observant ones must be noticing something here... But we'll come back to that in a second... The seller is super supercool and offers to let us hang out and play all the other games... So we plug in Ninja Gaiden... It boots up fine...



But the controls are wonky. It forces you to run left for both P1 and P2. So it's unplayable. So I take a look at the cab...



Wait a minute. That color looks familiar.   And so does the ridge of glue that makes the shape of the missing sideart...



I have a feeling about this...





HOLY FREAKING RADARSCOPE BATMAN!

So back to what the observant ones must have noticed by now.

The Devestators used to be a Donkey Kong which was converted into another Nintendo game and then finally converted to Devestators.

The Ninja Gaiden also used to be a Donkey Kong in a Radarscope cabinet which was converted into another Nintendo game and then finally converted to Ninja Gaiden.

AND HERES WHERE THE STORY GETS AWESOME...

So I tell Stacy (who knows about the Radarscope business):
"Um... Yeah... That Ninja Gaiden used to be a Radarscope cab with Donkey Kong in it."

To which he replies:
"I do believe that is so full of win, I might have just had a stroke."

So he's hellbent on getting the DK AND the Ninja Gaiden so he can restore Donkey Kong to a much more awesome (and much more Japanese) cabinet.

And Levi...



...well, Levi has fallen head over heels in love with the Altered Beast. When we tried to play it earlier, we didn't notice that the wire in the power cable was completely exposed, so it (the wire) arced and sparked and pooped its pants. The seller assured us that it was functional though. But Levi has played it on the Genesis so much that he "NEEDS TO HAVE IT"!  

So it's about this time that the seller seems to realize we are loving these games and offers Stacy a proposition. His original ad posted that he wanted $250 for each game. For us, he said, he'd be willing to sell them all for $1000, just to have the empty garage space.

Levi goes .
And I go .
And Stacy goes .

So what do you think about it, kid?



Well I guess that settles it. Armed with only $250 at the moment... we're gonna need some money...
(And no, we're not in the U.K.... Being a Sunday, we just drove backwards through the ATM lane at Wells Fargo... )



Levi's $200 for ALTERED BEAST...



...and going back to U.S. BANK...



...Stacy grabs the rest of the money...



...and we head back...



...to the seller's house. Levi says there are no pictures of me, so I cozy up to the beautiful game.



We tell the seller we need a picture of the handing over of the cash for DragonsLairFans.com. He laughs and says "Whatever you guys want." Levi's seen the site and begs to play the DarthNuno for the picture. How could we say no to that smile? FOR THE BELGIANS!



So life is good. The seller tells us that his pop machine takes nickels, has three kinds of beer, and we are welcome to as much beer as we want.

 

BEST. DAY. EVER.

So I try to play some Enduro Racer...



...unfortunately the brake is broken and the throttle only kinda works. (It only accelerates to 60 km/hr. Blazing blazing fast!) But we all play anyway...



Okay, it's about 1:30 pm at this point and we have to start loading cabs. Levi has to be at work at 4:00, and this is gonna take multiple trips, so we start...



One up...



..and another...



They're strapped in tight and we take them back to Stacy's.



Levi as Singe, protecting the lair. I think his Civic would be Daphne in this picture.



We try to find an exotic car to take a picture of, as you all seem to pass them on your roadtrips, but the best we get is Stacy's 924S in the garage.



Stacy's neighbor Tim comes out to see what we got...



...and offers to let us use his garage to store them until we can get Stacy's garage cleaned out.



Thanks, Tim!



Two in the garage...



...while Levi grabs all the nickels he can find.



Back to the seller's house, and ALTERED BEAST going into the truck (SO HEAVY!)...



...and also RADAR GAIDEN KONG...



...when the Seller comes out of his house with a gift. "This was in my fridge if you guys want it."...



90 degree weather and we're all in heaven.





We ask the seller about his MS. PAC-MAN. (Apparently he bought all these cabs from one seller in a lot, just so he could own MS. PAC.) He says "Why don't you come downstairs and take a look?" He has (blurry) video darts...



...and in another room, his movie theatre/game area. I've now had my picture taken with two Kongs today.



After getting my ass kicked by ROBOTRON, I play JOUST with his son on his Midway multi cab.



He doesn't know too much about the inner workings of MS. PAC, so Stacy offers to turn the dip-switches to free play for him.



No more quarters!



While they talk (and Stacy plays)...



...I check out his movie screen...



...and get attacked by his dog, Bosco.



Stacy playing real-life Punch Out!



Time's running out, though, so we have to head back...



...but we stop first for cigarettes and lemonade iced-tea.



The cabs back at home.



Unloading the precious cargo...



...and Tim will leave the garage cracked so we can get back in.



We rest and take our quick bathroom break at Stacy's...



...and hit the road one last time.



Back at the sellers, we break out our collection of nickels.







Awesome.





The last (and heaviest!) one goes into the truck.





We finish our beers on the balcony of the seller. We sit and talk about classic gaming with our gorgeous view of the Yakima Valley.







We finish and Levi high-fives the seller's son goodbye.



I grab one last Bud Light from the machine... but the machine slices it and it's leaking...



...there's really only one thing to do in a situation like that.



It's a shame to leave. The seller, his wife, and his son are awesome people. Very nice and hospitable. We take his number/e-mail in case we find a decently priced ASTEROIDS or vector STAR WARS (both on his must-have list.) We hope we will run into him again someday.



The final odometer reading:



Only 19 miles, but hours and hours later. Whew. Time for those frozen beers.



Levi goes off to work, but Stacy and I start working on the machines. ALTERED BEAST is first, as it only needs a new power cable.



And done. It works perfectly. It just needs a little cleaning and dusting. Levi will be very happy.



We pull out Stacy's Porsche and bike and move all the cabinets from Tim's garage into his garage.
We have to see what it looks like with all the DK cabs in a row.



Our friend Siggy comes over and immediately names the defective ENDURO RACER after our friend Paul. (Paul's bike also has faulty brakes, crooked handlebars, and acceleration problems.) By the end of the night, even though you can't even make it to the first checkpoint, we have all played PAUL RACER many times. I think we just like doing the wheelies. Also, by the end of the night, the game has been renamed SUPER PAUL RACER 2000 TURBO EXTREME, and we all think the game might be funnier if we don't fix it. Paul will, of course, hate us for months because of this.



Our friend Brother Matt comes over and takes on ALTERED BEAST...



...while Stacy and I take on Donkey Kong. We figure out the Sharp monitor inside Devestators is compatible with DK. While it has considerable burn-in and the color red isn't showing up, we swap the monitors anyway. Stacy pulls out the screwdriver and tweaks a couple things. "Hey Dahlor, how does that look?"

Awesome.  

The burn in from Devestators is a photo-negative of the colors on Donkey Kong, so you can't even see it. Not one little bit. We put everything back together and four of us help lift Donkey Kong to Stacy's second floor apartment. We clear a space and turn it on...



Wonderful. And while our friends play Altered Beast, Ninja Gaiden (which took 5 minutes to fix the controls), and Super Paul Racer 2000 Turbo Extreme downstairs in the garage, we survey the situation upstairs.  And where once there was one...



...now there are two. Come on, Stacy. Show us how happy you are.



Aw, come on. You can do better than that. FOR THE BELGIANS!!!



There you go.

And while there's quite a bit of work to do on all of them, that will wait for another day. If any of you have any questions, comments, or advice on these cabs or the mechanics of them (especially Enduro Racer), feel free to post them here. Stacy's account will be approved soon and in the meantime he (codepoet82) will be reading this thread without the ability to post. I'll pass along anything you guys have to say.

Dahlor out.