Earlier this year Scott Manderson, a forum member with the username MadDog, passed away at the age of 24.  Scott battled cancer for 2 years that took a lot from him, but it never took his warmth, kind spirit and positive energy.  Our community was shocked when we heard the diagnosis as he had kept it a secret for a while but remained a beacon of positivity during what must have been a very difficult time.  

It is this spirit of hope and optimism that has touched us all.  Scott had a lasting impact on us all, one we will never forget.  As a community, both on this site and hopefully as a wider gaming community, we are looking to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust in his name.

The Teenage Cancer Trust provides support and care for teenagers in the UK that have cancer.  Every day around seven young people aged between 13 and 24 are diagnosed with cancer and the Teenage Cancer Trust works to help them in any manner they can.  Scott’s family has spoken highly about the Teenage Cancer Trust at St James’’s University Hospital in Leeds where Scott received support and we hope to raise money so that they can support others like him.

From midday on Friday November 11th until midday on Saturday November 12th we shall be participating in a 24 hour gaming marathon.  Members of our community will head to Arcade Club in Bury, Manchester where we will be playing games throughout that 24 hours with no sleep in what we are calling MadDog Marathon.  

Arcade Club has been kind enough to host us and will be a great venue for a gaming marathon.  It has a lot of classic arcade titles such as Asteroids, Double Dragon, Missile Command, Pac-Man, Street Fighter and many more, as well as a host of pinball machines.  We will be playing these along with some of our favourite console games and all of this will be streamed online.

Arcade Club is open from 6pm until midnight on Friday and 11am - 11pm on Saturday (and 11am - 6pm on Sunday) and anyone will be able to pop in and join us during these hours, but we will continue to play and live stream from Arcade Club throughout the night.  During the day we’ll be having tournaments, challenges and other on-site fundraising activities to help raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust.  We’d love if you came along to support us and enjoy the on-site facilities.

Other members, and we hope people from outside this site, will be joining us from where they are to raise money.  We’ll have more details about this soon and if you are interested in joining in, or have some ideas you’d love to see, please get in touch.

Scott was a big Liverpool FC fan and we hope to show that with the gaming community you will never play alone.  The work that Teenage Cancer Trust does is so important to a lot of people and we’d love for you to get involved, donate and support our fundraising activities to help them continue their amazing work that touches so many people.

We will post more updates in the future on here and on our official charity page.  We also have a Facebook page and a Twitter account you can follow.  If you’d like to get involved please get in touch.