Hugo (, often referred to as "Hugo the Troll" in English) is a children's and family-oriented interactive television show that aired between 1990 and 1995. It was created by the Danish company Interactive Television Entertainment (ITE). Since its premiere on TV2, this popular one-player interactive game show has aired in more than 40 countries. The program's audience callers used their telephones to guide the titular character, a small "TV troll" named Hugo, through various simple video game scenarios. The game was played on the television screen, broadcast live from a studio with hosts commenting on the progress. Typically, the goal of the players was to help Hugo brave various dangers on his way to rescue his family, held by the evil witch Scylla. After either successfully finishing the game or failing, the contestants were then rewarded with real world prizes based on their performance. The show has been adapted into multiple video-game releases, as well as into various merchandise and other media in an extended media and merchandise franchise.
Show
Hugo, created by Danish company SilverRock Productions, later known as ITE since 1992, was originally made for Nordisk Film. It was first aired on the Danish television channel TV2 as part of the program Eleva2ren in September 1990, following the earlier success of the company's previous game, OsWALD. The show featured a video game that was remotely played by a contestant via telephone connection. A player randomly chosen from among the callers would be tasked with controlling the titular cartoon character on the TV screen by pressing digit keys on the phone (either 1, 2, 3 or 2, 4, 6) which represented different character actions or storyline options; an optional easy mode would be turned on to show on the screen the button that needs to be pressed. It was initially targeted for the children audience between the ages of 4-14.Hugo – an international, interactive TV star! (2001 ITE press release) Target age was alternatively presented as 2-12 and varied depending on the country in licensed content, such as 6–16 in Portugal and 6–14 in Vietnam, with some family (group play) or even adult editions. The original show Skærmtrolden Hugo ("Hugo the Screen Troll") proved to be an instant hit, achieving high average TV ratings of 42%, and aired continuously on TV2 for five years. Since then, Hugo has been licensed to more than 40 (43 as of 2007) TV shows around the world, beginning with the Spanish and French versions in 1992.
Many international viewers believed that the program was native to their countries, as Hugo spoke Danish only in Denmark's original version. Its worldwide success also inspired several other similar shows during the 1990s, such as Games World (UK/Germany 1993-1998), Pizza Rollo (France 1994-1995), Joe Razz (Sweden 1994), Game Over (Finland 1994-1997), Galilei the Dog (Finland 1996-1997), Maxihra (Slovakia 1997-2000), and ITE's own Throut and Neck (Denmark/Brazil 1997-1999).
Story, gameplay, and rules
The show's first season, which ran on Danish television for a year, featured only the titular cartoonish character placed in a computer-animated world. The protagonist, Hugo, was a friendly and small, yet brave and resourceful, cheerful Scandinavian troll of 220 years (still a young age for a troll), who would navigate a maze in a dangerous old goldmine in a quest for hidden treasure, his movements controlled by the player through a press-button telephone. The first season introduced how the in-game Hugo would often communicate with the player to comment on the game's progress (in addition to the commentary by the show's live hosts observing in the studio), as well as to feature a variety of other animated and also voiced cutscenes, including humorous Hugo's death animations.
For the next season, the show was vastly expanded for new adventures at the request from Nordisk Film asking for more characters, adding Hugo's 215-year-old beloved wife Hugolina (Hugoline) and their three kids: Rit (TrolleRit), Rat (TrolleRat), and Rut (TrolleRut, Ruth in some countries), who were aged between 20 (toddler) and 50 (little child). Also added was Hugo's archenemy, the beautiful but hateful and cruel witch that would become internationally best known as Scylla (or alternatively Sculla) but originally was named Afskylia in Denmark (with several alternative names in foreign-language editions, such as Hexana in German, Maldicia in Spanish, Maldiva in Portuguese, Maldícia in Brazilian, Mordana in Croatian, Bosnian and Slovenian, Skylla in Swedish, Tarastella in Finnish, Cadı Sila in Turkish, and Simla in Vietnamese). In the story, Scylla the witch, a terrible menace of the realm of Trollwood (in which she had been trapped by a wizard long ago) and later also beyond, constantly keeps kidnapping the family of Hugo, who thus has to again and again try to rescue them and defeat her. The subsequent editions gradually expanded on this concept to involve more characters of good (Hugo's friends) and evil (Scylla's minions) talking and humanoid or regular animals. Scylla remained the only (not counting the original scenario's old miner) in-game human character to be met within the game's fantastic take on modern Denmark, but many human characters were later featured in the 2000s Agent Hugo reboot game series set in an alternative hi-tech world.
The globally familiar standard content of subsequent Hugo programs and their basic rules have been established in 1991 by the vastly expanded second season of the original Danish show. It now featured Hugo's dangerous journeys in search of his family, kidnapped by the evil Scylla and held captive by her within one of the witch's several skull-themed lairs. The contest's objective became guiding the on-screen Hugo through one of the given game scenarios (the choice between them could be left for the player to decide), typically of jump-n-run genre, to reach Scylla's lair before running out of his three lives. An either a two-dimensional (side-scrolling left to right) or pseudo three-dimensional (seen from behind Hugo) level represented a different adventure. Almost invariably, Hugo would keep constantly moving forward (for example, riding either a snowboard down a mountain or a skateboard on a half-pipe style dry watermill chute, or flying a biplane through a magical thunderstorm), while avoiding obstacles in his way and surviving the witch's magic and her assorted traps and minions. A failure to avoid any of the dangers caused the loss of one of Hugo's lives. Usually, the players had to react in the style back then seen as reminiscent of Dragon's Lair, albeit more repetitive but less scripted, quick time events requiring the caller to press the correct button in time.
The game over state could be also triggered by running out of time (usually represented by either some sort of a deadly peril constantly chasing Hugo, such as an avalanche or a flood, or by his remaining amount of fuel or oxygen) or by entering an incorrect password-like puzzle sequence at the end of some levels (the latter required the players to first discover and memorize the solution, presented in the form of a particular set of three symbols randomised for each session, and then to enter it correctly). Failing in any of such cases would make the game end instantly, no matter how many lives have remained in reserve. Several scenarios further required the player to use a map of the level (with the time countdown continuing while checking it) as Hugo would have to keep choosing correctly between alternating paths, where choosing wrong would have Hugo eventually reach a dead end. While advancing towards the witch's hideout, the players were given an opportunity to collect the scattered treasure (initially mostly bars and bags of gold) to increase their game scores. Picking up rocks, on the other hand, would decrease the score.
During the course of the game, Hugo often gave various messages directly to the players in cutscenes, encouraging them with his rhyming catchphrases while breaking the fourth wall. Losing any of the lives would also play a relevant cutscene showing Hugo dying or being otherwise stopped in a cartoonish way, often uttering an encouraging or sarcastic line to comment on this. Scylla, watching Hugo through her magic ball, would loudly laugh at the player's minor mistakes (such as picking up bags of rocks decreasing the game's score) and occasionally react to Hugo's progress in her own cutscenes, activating traps or casting spells. The most iconic of such scenes involved the illusion of Hugo knocking on the TV screen from the inside when on his last life, and a similar animation of Scylla scratching the screen with her nails before taunting the player about Hugo being hopeless against her. Television hosts, meanwhile, also cheered on the callers, as would the live audience if any such were present. After finishing the main game by either winning or losing (only winning in some versions), the number of score points would determine the value of the real-world prizes to be awarded to the player, which were calculated depending on the amount of gold and other valuables collected along the way, with any lost lives negatively impacting the score. Such prizes varied widely in the different programs across the world (in Poland, for example, even just the participation-award items were already valuable). Usually, several people would participate as players during the typical half an hour of airtime. The game could sometimes become much more difficult to play due to input lag problems.
A potential large bonus awaited those who successfully reached the end of the given scenario(s). In the iconic climax scene, Hugo had arrived at his destination and now stood face-to-face with the evil Scylla, who would present him a set of ropes hanging next to the cage with his abducted family. The player had to choose between three or four options where sheer luck would determine the outcome: depending on which rope was pulled, either Hugo managed to both save his family and finally rid the world of Scylla (the truly game-winning best outcome, where she would be magically tied up and launched headfirst out of window of her lair from a spring device), or she would still triumph in the end after all (an alternative game over state with her capturing Hugo and disposing of him in the same way), or the family would be freed but she would get away (the canonical happy end with her turning into a bird to escape him); some versions would also have the witch youth and beauty and become a hideous old hunchback. Accordingly, the score was doubled (tripled in some versions), halved (erased completely in some versions), or left at its current state (doubled in some versions). Over the next years, not only various new scenarios but also alternative end scenes have been added to the show (and consequently also to its video-game adaptation series). One of them was no longer chance-based and involved Hugo having to steal the key to Scylla's treasure chamber while avoiding her lightning bolt spells.