Pick Date: 6/06/08    I was reading through the KLOV messageboards, and a fellow member posts about a cheap Donkey Kong cocktail for sale and that someone in the midwest should scoop it up. I check the link and the price was an absolute steal. Furthermore, it had a Buy It Now option, which means no bids. I get to own it with one click. I do a double check. The auction was 1 hour old, the picture of the game looked awesome and the only mentioned problem was a monitor issue. The left side of the screen was curling and scrambling. I know from experience that this was a simple tweak of the horizontal hold pot on the monitor board. At the very worst, I was probably looking at a $10 cap kit. So I click it, win it, and set up a time to go pick it up.

Now Emporia is deep in the heart of Kansas, and this road trip was going to take 4 hours one way. We had family plans all weekend, so the only day to pick it up was Friday. To complicate things further, my wife needed the van at 1PM. That means I had to pick up the game and be back by that time. With the calculated time at 4 hours, I was going to have to leave at 4AM in the morning, pick it up by 8AM, and then be back shortly after noon (12PM). My wife told me she wasn't going with me, this one was going to have to be solo.

I check the night before and the prediction was rain, lovely, lovely rain. Great for road trips. NOT! So I leave at 4AM, drive through a Thunderstorm and after 2 hours it was beautiful lovely skies. Just my luck. I drive though rush hour traffic in Kansas City, and head straight towards the prize in Emporia. When I arrive the garage door was already open and the game was sitting there glimmering in the light. The guy told me he was selling it several hundred dollars cheaper than what he paid for it because he didn't know how to fix these types of games. I fire it up, see the monitor issue, play a game, shook the guys hand, loaded it up and leave. On the way home I grab some gas, some drive thru Taco Bell and chug through a couple of Vaults for energy. I also ran into the same thunderstorm again when I left 7 hours earlier. Best part was I made it back by 12:30PM, just in time!

After I get home I unloaded the game and then some time later pull the monitor out. That horizontal hold was hidden right in the middle of the monitor board and very hard to get to. After I tweaked the pot the picture came up beautifully. I adjust the other controls for a brighter, more centered picture and also adjust the sound. I pull the table glass off and get it all cleaned up. All in all, this is now one good looking, fully playable Donkey Kong game.

What to do, what to do, what do I do with Donkey Kong #2?

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