With the tragic passing of Billy Hudson, aka Billy Chaser, I decided to share the interview I did with him for CultureMap when The Game Chasers Movie—which ultimately became Adventures in Game Chasing—starting filming, way back in November of 2019. Bill was generous with his time and provided some interesting history on The Game Chasers’ YouTube channel and lots of background info on the film. RIP, Billy, you were loved by many.
BRETT WEISS: How did you meet Jay?
BILLY CHASER: Blockbuster Video. We worked together at a store in Grand Prairie.
WEISS: Were you guys movie buffs?
CHASER: More gaming than movies, but yeah, we liked movies, too. We’d work our shift then go play video games. I lived in an apartment at the time and was studying at The Art Institute in Dallas. This was in 1999.
WEISS: How long did you work at Blockbuster?
CHASER: Less than a year. After that, I got a job at a television station.
WEISS: When did you guys start The Game Chasers channel?
CHASER: We started it in 2010 and began making videos in 2011.
WEISS: Was the channel your idea, and you approached Jay with it?
CHASER: Yeah.
WEISS: Was he receptive to the idea right away?
CHASER: Yeah, he’s generally up for anything. He loves video games and that sort of thing.
WEISS: I assume you guys were going around looking for video games long before you started the show?
CHASER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Three to four years before the show started, we would go out to flea markets and pawnshops and Craigslist finds. It was a competition in a way. We didn’t go out together as much as we would separately. After work, I’d hit a pawn shop and show Jay what I had, and he’d get mad and say, “I can find better stuff.” So he’d go to a Good Will or a Salvation Army and find stuff. He and his wife at the time were double-teaming it and finding all those games at different places and collecting them.
WEISS: Lots of good finds, I’m guessing?
CHASER: During that three-to-four-year time frame, we probably amassed about 70 percent of our collection. It was much easier to find stuff back then.
WEISS. Oh, I can relate to that for sure. What was the germ of the idea for the Game Chasers show? What inspired you?
CHASER: I was already making videos on YouTube. My professional background is in video and film. We were watching a show called American Pickers. I don’t know why, we just liked it. I’d go over and hang out, and we’d watch American Pickers. It was entertaining, and one day it hit me that we should do a show like this, but make it about video games.
We were watching one episode, and they went to this place that had a bunch of junk, but in the corner they had a Vectrex just sitting there. They never mentioned it, they never touched on it, they never talked about it, and I’m sitting there like, “Dude, there’s a Vectrex in there, why aren’t you picking that up? C’mon, man!”
WEISS: They probably thought it was just a crappy old black-and-white TV or something.
CHASER: Yeah, the Vectrex is amazing. It drove me crazy, so I’m like, “Dude, let’s just do this with video games. We’ve got a Toy Chasers show as well. We collect toys, too. G.I. Joes, Transformers—basically all the stuff we grew up with, because we’re still big kids.
WEISS: What are some of the challenges and annoying aspects of filming The Game Chasers?
CHASER: The annoying aspect is that since we keep it 100% real, sometimes we go out and find nothing, which is getting more and more common. Getting kicked out of flea markets, the pressure to produce something that you have no control over is a challenge because we can’t control if a flea market is going to have vendors that carry games. A regular show like American Pickers has all these producers and people who work on them. They can send them out to places to look for stuff, because in TV, time is money. There’s no way that if we were on TV they would do it the way we do it, because that’s a waste of resources, going out on a weekend and potentially finding something or finding nothing. On TV, you have to meet a schedule. It’s just us, and we have no control over what we’re going to find.
WEISS: What is your favorite aspect of creating the show?
CHASER: I like the technical aspect. I hate going out and shooting because it’s stressful trying to find something so we can make a decent video, but once I sit down in my cave to edit it, I can relax and do my thing. Probably the best part is reading the comments after we post a video. When people say that they love it. We get messages from people saying they really appreciate the videos, that they helped them when they were going through a rough time. It makes it all worth it.
WEISS: The show is
definitely entertaining. I find myself cracking up when I’m watching it. Do you
guys have a background in comedy? Do you enjoy comedy films?
CHASER: We grew up liking the same type of 80s and 90s comedy road movies. We share the same type of humor. We incorporated a lot of that into the show naturally. Our animated cartoons are where we go really crazy, where we get as creative as we like. That’s what I really enjoy doing. The more scripted stuff. I love creating something out of thin air that never existed before. I can’t really do that with Game Chasers, because whatever happens, happens, depending on the situation. But with cartoons and a movie, I can create something from my mind that never existed.
WEISS: What is the movie going to be about? Is it going to be similar to the show, or maybe something completely different?
CHASER: Think of it as a fictionalized retelling of the Game Chasers in a prequel kind of way. It’s kind of how the Game Chasers came to be, but fictional. It’s a road trip comedy, but with elements of…it’s deeper than that. It’s not an hour-and-a-half of raunchy comedy with fart jokes. It’s got heart and soul and a lot of that kind of deep stuff. It’s basically Jay and I tracking down the original NES that we used to play as kids and how we use that to reconnect with our youth.
WEISS: But it’s fictional and scripted.
CHASER: Right. It’s fictional and scripted, but with elements of reality. Real life is boring. The things that happen to us in real life are boring, so you’ve got to “movie it up” and make an entertaining movie. The core soul elements of why we go and connect with these games and why we play them—that’s there, the essence of the movie, the heart and soul of the Game Chasers. While it may be in a different format, the basics of the Game Chasers are still there at the epicenter of it all.
WEISS: What can you say about casting at this point? Other than you and Jay, who is going to be in the movie?
CHASER: It’s going to be a combination of people fans have seen on The Game Chasers, people they’ve grown to know and love. There will also be a few people fans haven’t seen that will add a great deal of interest to the film. We’ve got our eyes set on one well-known Hollywood actor for a role. I want people to know that the movie won’t be just us taking the camera out and shooting the movie ourselves. We’re going to be hiring a professional film crew, a cinematographer, a VX artist who works on The Walking Dead and The Orville.
WEISS: What are some of the challenges associated with putting on a video game convention?
CHASER: One challenge is how many of these shows are popping up now. There’s over saturation to some degree, which can be both good and bad. A good thing is that people are used to them and know what they’re about. They can come out and have a good time and know what to expect, but also the vendors only have a finite amount of things to sell. If somebody visits one show, maybe they don’t want to go to another. A “been there, done that” sort of thing.
WEISS: Did you and Jay start Retropalooza because you noticed that the Dallas/Fort Worth area didn’t have much in the way of retro gaming conventions?
CHASER: That’s something we talked about. At this point, it’s mostly Jay who does it. Originally, we tossed around the idea of doing a show…crap, at this point is was more than six years ago. There was Screwattack Gaming Convention [in the Dallas area], but it wasn’t really like the other conventions we went to. It was more like a party for Screwattack fans. Sure, there was a vendor room where people could buy and sell, but it was more of an afterthought. We wanted to do a really big convention with a ton of vendors where people could come out and buy, sell, find anything they want.
WEISS: Yeah, Retropalooza is much more mainstream than Screwattack. That show was great fun, but they definitely catered toward their audience. They didn’t really do that much outreach to the community, at least for the first couple of shows.
CHASER: It was nothing like what we had in mind for the area. We tossed around the idea for a convention, and I kind of wavered on it at first, because I’m not a fan of organizing things. I’m the “artsy” guy for lack of a better word. I hate making calls and all that other stuff that goes into putting on a convention. I was like, “If you want it done, you’re going to have to do most of it. He kind of took it over and to where it is now.
WEISS: For you, what is the retro gaming culture like in the Dallas/Fort Worth area?
CHASER: It’s still going really, really strong. Every month, Facebook groups get together to buy, sell, and trade at a store or whatever. There are so many stores that have popped up in recent years. The DFW retro gaming scene is probably the best in the country. It seems to have the most people, the most competition. It’s a hotbed for buying, selling, and the overall celebration of it.
