DK control panel and controller

If you look closely at this control panel you'll notice it has several things wrong.  I'm certainly not a Donkey Kong expert, but I can see that the jump button is all wrong.  The other thing missing is the clear disk that sets under the controller.  I think it's called a joystick guard.  The eight tiny bolts that hold the plastic overlay in place are completely rusted on the tops.  Lastly the joystick is rusty and shabby looking.

I started by disassembling the joystick.  It was really dirty and rusted inside.  Adding some white lithium grease and cleaning it up made a world of difference.  I was a little concerned because the joystick was seized up in a strange manner.  My first thought was that maybe there were some parts missing, but everything was there and in order, just dirty.  I guess these little Nintendo joysticks are very robust.

Mike's Arcade sells all the parts you will need to rebuild one of these.  If you're doing a restore, please don't toss out the original controller.  They can be refurbished and if you don't want to do that, then post it up for sale on KLOV or even eBay.  I need to order the clear plastic joystick guard, so I'm thinking about ordering a replacement shaft and spring.  This one will work fine, but I'd like the control panel to look as good as possible when I'm finished.  And let's face it, the controller is a main focal point.  It's important to get this bit right, as the controller is the game so to speak.

I plan to replace the missing orange button, the rusty bolts, and the instruction card.  Once I had the buttons off and the bolts out, the control panel overlay slips off and you can see the result of all the years of spilled soda.  This part I cleaned carefully, you don't want to scratch the back side of this as it will show through.  Once all this is cleaned up, I could see that I had lots of cigarette burns.

Fortunately none of them are really bad.  I dug out a headlight restore kit that I had on hand, and used it to polish up the panel.  It did an okay job, I guess if I wanted to get it perfect I could spend hours polishing this thing, it looks good enough for me at this time.