Donkey Kong Button Replacement

The player 2 push button on my Donkey Kong system has always been a bit sketchy. Aside from the very obvious cigarette burns on the bezel of the button (both buttons, actually), the push button mechanism really just never worked quite right. Finally, the metal clip that holds the plunger part of button to the housing gave out and at some point, the now loose button plunger was lost:

I have plenty of regular push buttons in my parts box, but of course, Nintendo buttons had to be a different length than the standard push buttons of the day, so the ones that I had that would work fine on any other non-Nintendo system were too short for the Donkey Kong control panel. I was able to locate Nintendo specific replacement buttons on Mike’s Arcade website and ordered a couple of them to replace both buttons to ensure the colors matched. After about 5 days, the buttons arrived and looked to be solid replacements:

Button replacement on a control panel is a very simple affair. Simply unlatch the control panel and turn it over to reveal the single locking nut that secures a push button to the panel:

Simply unscrew the nut, feed the new button through the hole and tighten the nut back up. In no time I had a brand new (sort of) looking Donkey Kong control panel:

As it turns out, the working button I replaced on my Donkey Kong panel was a pretty good color match for the mix-matched ones I currently had on my Donkey Kong Junior system:

So, I decided to swap the off-color player 2 button on that panel:

and now both my systems look a lot better:

Someday I’ll pick-up a couple of clear plastic overlays to replace the cigarette scarred ones I currently have.