Fully Playable So Ive got all of the electronics fixed and rebuilt the cabinet has been washed clean of all the Turkey Hunter conversion stink, the last bit is to plug in the Killer Instinct 2 PCB I bought and fire it up: Most people would stop here, but Im not most people.

Killer Instinct 2 is my all-time favorite arcade game, theyre pretty uncommon to find in arcades these days and they seem to be fairly uncommon among collectors as many were converted to other games and most collectors seem to prefer KI1.

It had been converted to Turkey Hunter USA and had the turkey hunter controls and PCB removed so it was just a cabinet and monitor with Turkey hunter art work.

Kind of spendy for essentially an empty cabinet but I enjoy a good project and being able to restore my favorite game from this shameful state gives me a great sense of pride.

Here is an unboxing video I made that shows the machine as I received it: Paint RemovalCabinet: First thing was getting the paint removed off the original artwork, this was first because I wanted to get it done out in the garage before moving the machine indoors.

I first tried a product called Lift-Off, which worked but not very well, I then switched to a different product called Citri-Strip, which was fantastic.

The results: I also attempted to remove the Turkey hunter control panel graphics, after unbolting the plastic overlay I tried both a heat gun and goo-gone to separate the new control panel art from the original control panel art, the results, sadly, werent that great: You can see that the new art work pulled up some of the paint from the original art, leaving nasty white lines of missing graphics.

Even if that wasnt the case there were three additional holes drilled in the original overlay around the player 2 joystick and the colors were all faded and dingy (the Killer Instinct logo on the Control panel top is supposed to be red just like the Killer Instinct logo on the control panel front).

I managed to find a new, never used Killer Instinct 2 marquee, which made for the easiest and best looking part of the cabinet deconversion so far.

Of course even this took some work, the marquee was for a conversion kit (meaning for people who wanted convert a non Killer Instinct machine to Killer Instinct 2) so it needed to be trimmed to size.

Electronics: The power supply was making some horrid noises, it wasnt even the original power supply.

I pulled it and bench tested it and found that the output voltages were way off so it was getting junked.

Here is the chassis with all of the new parts installed: No good, after reinstalling the image quality was better but the monitor couldnt hold a sync; it was even worse than before.

After getting advice from a few experts they told me to check that I hadnt installed one of the new parts backwards.

Some small adjustments still need to be made but on a whole the picture looks great.

Control Panel: Not only was the original control panel gutted and then drilled out when it was converted but all of the original control panel wiring had been cut out of the machine as well.

I had to completely disassemble the control panel and install new tee-nuts for the joysticks.

I couldnt find a Killer Instinct 2 control panel harness for sale so I would have to build one.

I found a harness for a different Midway game that used the same style connectors and wiring colors so I bought it.

Repinned the connectors for Killer Instinct and then routed, trimmed, and crimped a disconnect onto each wire.

Here is what I started with (just 2 wires), and what I built: Control Panel Overlay and Monitor Bezel: I still havent been able to find new control panel art, so I made myself an temporary cover-up out of some black poster board.

I also bought a reproduction laser-cut lexan control panel overlay and I had new monitor bezel stickers printed from some scans that I found online.

Killer Instinct Arcade Pcb