I need some help with a project I am working on.  Wondering if anyone knows how I would go about doing this.  I have an old Donkey Kong Cabinet that I stripped and am popping a tv in to play nes games on it, and I'm trying to figure out how to hard wire a nes controller onto the arcade controller.  I figured a NES advantage joystick would work, but im not quite sure.  Any help would be appreciated. thanks!

You could just cannibalize an old broken (cosmetically) controller for this. Open it up and strip to the circuit board. Then take the existing control panel, de-solder the leads from the four-way actuators and put them straight onto the contacts where the d-pad connections would be made. The circuit will be taken care of the arcade joystick so no need to keep the rubber piece. Do the same with the buttons and you're good to go Although isn't DK a one-button cabinet? You could probably rout out another hole and buy a spare button and necessary parts from anyplace that sells replacement materials. Connect 1-player and 2-player up to start and select and you're home free

Ah ok, I dont have any of the wires from the joystick or buttons, but I can put new ones on, and I plan to drill in and put another button on, thanks!

The Advantage joystick is a fairly separate module inside, so you should be able to remove it and lengthen the existing wires or just add new ones. There will be a wire for each of the 4 directions and one common ground wire. For the other buttons it would likely be easier just to get a new/used arcade button. There will be too much extra stuff for the buttons on the Advantage.