Hugo () is a media franchise created by the Danish company Interactive Television Entertainment (later ITE Media) in 1990 for the purpose of interactive television for children. It is based around the fictional character of Hugo, a friendly, small Scandinavian folklore troll engaged in a conflict against a wicked witch, often to save his family. Since its premiere in 1990, the Hugo game show has been aired in more than 40 countries, spawning dozens of video games for various platforms. Hugo spawned other merchandise, including dedicated magazines. As of 2012, the commercial parts of the franchise consist mostly of mobile games being published by the Danish company Hugo Games (renamed 5th Planet Games in 2018).
Setting and characters
The show is set in a cartoonish contemporary fantasy universe. The franchise's titular protagonist, Hugo, is a one-meter-tall troll living in the "Troll Forest", located somewhere in Scandinavia. Mette Kühnell Petersen, Skærmtrolden Hugo _ Hvor blev han af? , TV 2 Programmer, 14 July 2012. Hugo's family includes his beloved wife Hugolina (Hugoline in the original Danish version) and their three children, Rit (TrolleRit), Rat (TrolleRat), and Rut (TrolleRut). Their main antagonist is the evil Scylla (Afskylia, named differently in some localized versions, such as Hexana in German), an ancient and cruel witch with a grudge against the trolls dating back centuries and Hugo always standing in her way. Scylla often kidnaps Hugo's family because she needs their presence to restore and keep her own youth and beauty due to a curse. She uses her magic and minions, as well as various traps, to stop Hugo from rescuing his family or foil her other plots. The later-added characters are mostly non-human creatures and anthropomorphic animals, including Hugo's friends (such as Fernando the toucan and Jean Paul the chimpanzee in Jungle Island) and more of Hugo's enemies (notably Scylla's faithful but dumb henchman Don Croco, leading a humanoid crocodile army on Jungle Island to protect his mistress and help her oppress the Kikurians, a primitive tribe of the island's native creatures). All of this is presented in a humorous way, by default tailored to children aged 4–14.Hugo – an international, interactive TV star! (2001 ITE press release). According to Hugo creator Ivan Sølvason, the program's intended message was to teach children to protect their own families at any cost, including risking their lives to save them if needed.
Some later video games and other adaptations dropped the usual Hugolina-kidnapping motif, making Scylla beautiful by default yet still as hateful as ever. In their stories, the witch would variably seek revenge against Hugo personally or even try to get rid of the trolls everywhere once and for all, cause other mischief such as attacking Hugo's old friend Santa Claus in the Christmas games, or search for an ultimate power to take over the world, and several even dropped her as a character altogether. In 2001, a beaver minor enemy character received its own spin-off show, titled Stinky & Stomper. In the 2005 science fiction reboot titled Agent Hugo, Hugo became a futuristic James Bond-parody special agent as an employee of the crime-fighting spy organization R.I.S.K. to fight against high-tech enemies such as mad scientists and robots.
History
The idea for an interactive game TV show was conceived in 1987 by Ivan Sølvason, founder of the initially small video game studio SilverRock Productions and former editor-in-chief of Oberoende Computer, who was the creator of the computer video game OsWALD (1988) that came out in Nordisk Film's TV2 Denmark in 1989, and Niels Krogh Mortensen, an animator. Sølvason's small company SilverRock Productions, which was later renamed Interactive Television Entertainment (ITE) ApS in 1992, developed the character of Hugo as well as the designated, custom-built computer hardware system that would convert telephone DTMF signals into remotely controlling the characters in the game and allow the interaction of the audience and the TV action without delay. Sølvason and Krogh Mortensen created the concept of "Hugo the TV troll", and the first Hugo TV program was launched in September 1990. Since the show's second season, the player's objective has usually been to help Hugo free his wife and children from Scylla's captivity. Hugo had to journey through one of the different game environments before he got to one of Scylla's lairs, avoiding various traps and other dangers while collecting gold along the way. Once the player finished the game, he or she would receive a prize reward according to the obtained game score, which was based on the player's performance in the main scenario but greatly depended on how well Hugo fared in his final and purely luck-based task to rescue his family, with a special bonus for capturing Scylla.
Hugo was invented by Krogh Mortensen while he was biking to his grandmother from Hellerup to Gladsaxe in the spring of 1990. The character Hugo was originally supposed to be called Max, but the producer of Eleva2ren, John Berger, insisted on the name Hugo, forcing ITE to change the name and logo about one week before the premiere. The new name caused trademark problems because it was already registered in most European countries by Hugo Boss, while ITE A/S was first in Denmark and Portugal and could potentially stop Hugo Boss from launching any products in these markets. Eventually, both companies reached a coexistence agreement with the help of ITE in-house lawyer Nina Wium. ITE also fought hard against any attempt to abuse Hugo's "good name and reputation", resulting in more than 170 lawsuits against Danish producers and advertisers.
The programs were licensed for more than 40 (43 as of 2007 Hugos far er umulig at slå ud, Erhvervsbladet.dk, 5 September 2007.) TV shows around the world, tailored to individual markets. Many of the more than half a billion viewers believed that the program was native to their countries, as Hugo spoke Danish only in Denmark. Bjørn Schiønning, 20 år gamle Hugo hitter i udlandet, dr.dk, 21 December 2011. By 1994, Sweden's Datormagazin compared the European popularity of Hugo, with its branching off into merchandising, to that of the Ninja Turtles. On German-language kabel eins, there was also a spin-off show titled Hexana-Schloss ("Hexana's [Scylla's] Castle"). A more advanced show, Hugo: Jungle Island (Hugo Vulkanøen), premiered in January 1999. Some Danish Hugo items were released exclusively for the fan club Den Faktyrlige Bogklub (Hugo's Book Club), which was established in cooperation with the Danish publisher Carlsen Verlag in 1999. A "giant" Hugo theme park has also been considered at one point, circa 2000.
At first, Niels Krogh Mortensen was doing all of the graphics and animation using Deluxe Paint on an Amiga computer. His brother, Lars Krogh Mortensen, later assisted him. They were later joined by Torben B. Larsen,Torben B. Larsen, Cope-Com – developer and publisherDanish Game Museum, Hugo på nye Eventyr.Hall of Light, Hugo på nye eventyr del2. Jonas Fromm, Claus Friese, Anders Morgenthaler, 40 i dag Uden for pædagogisk rækkevidde?, Politiken, 5 December 2012 Jakob Steffensen, Jonas Raagaard, Entusiaster genskaber dansk spilklassiker, Computerworld, 10 August 2005. Stephen Meldal Foged, Martin Ciborowski, Casper Thomsen, Bag visitkortet: 3D-grafiker, Computerworld, 6 May 2004. Ulla Gram Larsen, and many other 2D and 3D artists; eventually, over 100 people were working on developing Hugo for ITE. Niels Krogh Mortensen worked on Hugo between 1990 and 1998. During this time, he usually directed and managed the projects; he also created storyboards and drew graphics. The Krogh Mortensen brothers and Jakob Steffensen left ITE in 1997 and founded their own company, Krogh Mortensen Animation A/S (KMA), who was later contracted to animate several more Hugo games.
In 2002, Sølvason sold ITE to the venture capital company Olicom A/S; Reuters, Olicom tredoblede tab efter nedskrivning på portefølje , Euroinvestor.com, 28 August 2002. Olicom then invested $22 million in the company, , ComON, 16 July 2002. reduced the staff of ITE by a third to 60 employees, and attempted to expand more into the US, UK, and Asian markets. Søren Dietrichsen, Tv-trolden Hugo på nye eventyr i USA, Erhvervsbladet.dk, 4 September 2002. Olicom in turn sold ITE in 2006, by then staffed by only 35 employees, Søren Dietrichsen, Tv-trold overlever turbulent ejerskifte, Erhvervsbladet.dk, 26 June 2006 to NDS Group, where it became NDS Denmark.NDS acquires Danish game design company ITE , PresseBox, 2 October 2006.
Hugo copyrights were acquired by the Danish game publisher Krea Medie A/S, a part of the media company Kraemedie. New owner Henrik Kølle revealed in October 2012 that several new projects for Hugo franchise were in plans, including a film project.Mats Nylund, Danish Hugo the Troll an unprecedented success, MCV Nordic, 16 October 2012. Later in November, Krea Medie was acquired by Egmont Group, but Hugo Games and the rights to Hugo were not part of the sale agreement with Egmont. Eva Obelitz Rode, Egmont køber Pixeline, business.dk, 28 November 2012. Mads Klougart, Silkeborg-firma solgt til medie-gigant , MJA.DK, 28 November 2012. A possible new Hugo live show was hinted at in July 2014. Hugo Games is owned and managed by Henry Mallet and was valued at DKK 56 million, generating an annual income of about DKK 10 million, as estimated in September 2014 when the company was listed for investment as HUGO NewHold ApS.
Video game adaptations
ITE games
Niels Krogh Mortensen and his brother Lars directed more than 30 Hugo games that sold more than 10 million copies, including over three million in Germany alone. The games were released for multiple platforms, including personal computers, game consoles, and mobile phones. John G. Pedersen, Mobilspil med Hugo populært, Mobilsiden.dk, 1 March 2004. Most of the titles are platform games or minigame compilations, but there are also several educational games. In the early games, Hugo attempts to free his family from the witch Scylla in familiar scenarios that are the same as in the TV show. In the later games, Hugo thwarts Scylla's more elaborate revenge plots against the trolls and schemes to gain a supreme magic power, and several games do not feature her at all. In some of the games, Hugo's family members (usually also to foil Scylla's), his friends, or sometimes even their enemies (in the multiplayer games) are featured as playable characters in addition to or instead of Hugo. Unlike the ones based directly on the TV show, limited to the established settings, the other entries in the Hugo game series have Hugo's family members visit a variety of different fantasy and real-world locations.
The first title in the long-running series of Hugo games was created in 1991 for the Commodore 64, followed by games for the Amiga, MS-DOS, Windows, Game Boy, and PlayStation. There have also been numerous small browser games, the first of which was released in 1996.ITE milestones (2001 ITE release) The first 3D platform game, Hugo: Quest for the Sunstones, was published in 2000. Beginning in 2005, Hugo was rebooted as Agent Hugo, with a new series of four 3D action games. Distributors and partners included Egmont Interactive, Electronic Arts, and Namco.Beth Winegarner, Namco, ITE bring two Hugo titles to the GBA, GameSpot, 18 January 2005. In Turkey, several games were published by the newspaper Hürriyet.
Later games