If you were to tell me that owning an arcade cabinet is a bit excessive, I would agree. But, besides the fact that it takes up a ton of room and isn't the most reliable piece of equipment around, there is a lot said about playing an arcade game in an actual arcade cabinet. Donkey Kong is one of the few cabinets that has an interesting history (that we know of). Certainly you've heard about the ship loads of Nintendo's Space Invaders-inspired game, Radar Scope, were in transit from Japan to America and during the journey it became clear that Americans weren't interested. In stepped Miyamoto and Donkey Kong was quickly created to save the day.

Even though Donkey Kong provided just the thing for Nintendo to put in all of those incoming cabinets, sales of Donkey Kong far outpaced that initial shipment. The cool part about all of this is that the cabinet was changed to a light blue color once it was given its own dedicated style. Those original games were all in red cabinets intended for angry humans to fight off alien invaders, and percentage-wise there are many fewer of them around than the blue variety. There are also cocktail and cabaret varieties to fit into bars and smaller locations (which I think are kind of ugly).

Most people probably think of the blue cabinet, and that's what I have. The red ones do look a bit nicer to me, but it's just a preference thing. Playing on a cabinet is so much more satisfying than using any sort of controller, especially when you have a couple of terrible games in a row and it feels really good to slam the joystick around in frustration and know that nothing bad was going to happen.

Cabinet images from klov.com.