By Sonya Hamasaki, CNN

(CNN) LOS ANGELES – Nine-year-old Caine Monroy climbs a stepladder and stands on his tiptoes, grabbing a teddy bear off a wall filled with toys. In one hand, he clutches a roll of yellow raffle tickets. In the other, a wad of one-dollar bills. He’s surrounded by a cavernous gaming arcade he built himself - using old cardboard boxes, scissors and packing tape. He spins around, and faces a large crowd of customers – actual paying customers – who have lined up down the block for a chance to play his games.

In any other world, this might be a child’s game of “pretend" - a magical arcade where the “paying customers” are actually friends who came over to play.

But in Caine’s world, this isn’t a figment of the imagination. This is real.

This is Caine’s Arcade.

“This is so cool!” Caine told us when we visited his store in East Los Angeles. The world started to learn about his arcade when a short film about his venture hit the Internet and went viral about a month ago.

Today, business is booming.

Caine flips through a spiral notepad where customers leave messages. So far, he’s received visitors from Seattle, New Jersey, Canada and even as far away as Australia. “Totally awesome, dude!” one message reads.

He still can’t believe it.

It all started last summer, when Caine started building the arcade at his father’s store. Using cardboard shipping boxes which were cast aside for recycling, he built his own version of his favorite games - classics, like Skee Ball, Soccer and the Claw machine.

From scratch, he fashioned a “claw” using an S-hook tied to yarn, and carefully rolled up pieces of masking tape to make soccer balls.

Caine’s Arcade was built inside his dad’s shop, Smart Parts Aftermarket, in an industrial corner of the city. Foot traffic is sparse and young adventurers are typically few and far between. But day after day, week after week, Caine sat outside his arcade, hoping for just one person to take notice and give his Claw machine a shot.
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