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Nintendo's video game history is well documented, with the original Donkey Kong arcade helping to kickstart the career of Shigeru Miyamoto and provide the company with a notable success outside of Japan. The rest, as they say, is history, though sometimes the smaller details are forgotten.

One of these is Sky Skipper, one of a number of arcades planned to arrive after the DK success story. It was play-tested and marketed in the US but ultimately dropped in 1982, making it immediately fascinating to retro arcade enthusiasts. Though ROMS have found their way online and the game actually has an Atari 2600 iteration, no complete cabinets are known to exist, only a very small number of PCBs.

Eager to remedy that scenario, three enthusiasts - Whitney Roberts, Olly Cotton and Alex Crowley - are working to restore the arcade in 2017. Crowley in particular is one of the best-known arcade collectors in the UK - we visited his arcade and spoke to him in 2014, and he's going to be a vocal representative for this Skyskipper Project on Twitter.

As you can see on the official website, the project's trio are planning to share information and material on the arcade; they'll document the journey towards unveiling a fully restored arcade cabinet of the game in 2017, with events planned to take place in the UK and US. It'll be fascinating to see the final result, as the cabinet will be put together based on the few promotional leaflets and images from the time.

It's certainly one to watch closely - a piece of Nintendo history will be brought back to life.

[source skyskipperproject.com]