Hugo (Danish: Skærmtrolden 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Hugo, created by Danish company SilverRock Productions, later known as ITE since 1992, was originally made for Nordisk Film.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. 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.
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