Page 18 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #42 FREE Edition

For Scott Leftwich, the '80s were the peak of existence! He has taken this hobby to a different level
than anyone I have met in my ten years of networking with video game hobbyists, and Old School Gamer is going to tell you the story. For him, it starts out with Weiners and Losers, his private arcade, continues to an '80s/Video Game Airbnb, and his current enterprise, Arcade Animals, a YouTube show in the vein of Starcade!
to experiment with. Then, in 1996, I bought Frogger, which was my first arcade game.”
Scott set a goal years ago to build the ultimate home arcade based
on the year 1984 - what is known
as the Golden Age of Arcades! So, black and white, up through Space Invaders, Vector Games, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. It's the late ‘90s, and Scott is buying these machines, filling up his mobile home, and
WIENERS AND LOSERS, RETRO AIRBNB, AND ARCADE ANIMALS By Ryan Burger
For him, it all began with growing up in the '80s and buying his first arcade game in 1996, but let's let him tell the story.
Scott Leftwich: “So I'm an ‘80s kid, and I was seduced by the arcades. It never left me. As soon as I got my license to drive, I went to flea markets and bought these obsolete consoles that I never got to play as a kid and that I wanted
then putting machines in other people’s houses. Years later, he and his wife bought their first house and brought the machines together into the man cave he had scouted out as part of shopping for that first home. Then, he moved into a new house...
WIENERS AND LOSERS
Scott: “Yeah, I bought this house specifically for my man cave, not knowing it would turn into Wieners and Losers. I brought my games
in here. At the time, I had maybe about 50-55... then my brother and I were kind of like, ‘What if people want to come in here and play, and we'll charge an admission, and I'll use that money to restore all these other games?’”
One of the local TV stations caught on after he made the local newspaper, and Scott tells us it just exploded after they did their morning show from the basement arcade!
Scott: “When I did this, it just unleashed that frustration (that people had), and all these people started pouring in here. I mean, there's just been thousands and thousands of people who have been here. That was 50 machines in 2014, and now, I'm at 136 and counting (plus more in storage).”
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OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #42