How we Streamed Games 30 Years Ago | Nostalgia Nerd

Goto Day 3 of the Story at • Day 3: Hugo's Advent C... ; Hugo the Troll, remember him? Well, if you're from Europe, probably, if you're from the UK, maybe, if you're from Brazil, almost definitely, North America? Maybe not so much. But Hugo the Troll was a sensation back in the 90s, in fact, his game was one of the first game streaming experiences, as a player controlled Hugo via. the phone, and we gazed in amazement at our TV sets. Appearing on Saturday morning TV such as What's Up Doc, I take a little look at his history in this video, before committing to the Christmas edition of Hugo; Hugo's Christmas Calendar. That's right, this might be a Hugo the Troll based video, but it's also time to kick off this year's advent calendar.
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📜 Resources 📜
BMX Stock Footage: • Bmx stock footage
Eleva2Ren (1st clip): • Hugo i Eleva2ren 4
Eleva2Ren (2nd clip): • Hugo i Eleva2eren
Swedish Hugo: • Soff-i-propp med Hugo-...
Chile Hugo: • Hugo - TVN 1995
Turkey Hugo: • Hugo ve Tolga Abi - 19...
Brazil Hugo: • Programa Hugo Game do ...
France: • HUGO DELIRE Novembre1992
What's Up Doc (Series 2): • What's up doc series 2...
Some other unused Hugo clips from other countries:
Denmark: • Video
Germany: • HUGO (13.05.1994) mit ...
Germany: • HUGO (15.02.1995) mit ...
In video links and references are provided where possible. If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything, please let me know (drop me an email via. the about page on KZbin or send me a tweet), so I can add it here. Apologies if I have missed anything out, it takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.
Errors and omissions excepted.
Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

Oh I so hated this. Especially when you heard someone play and you could hear from the button presses that the only reason why a kid lost was because of input lag.

[@hedgehog3180]

A few years ago there was a comedy show here which also had a phone segment like that where they made fun of that.

[@xZeroGunnerx]

Here in Chile Hugo was quite a success back in the mid nineties, i remember watching It every day after school. Good memories

[@xmaverickhunterkx]

And if you had cable, a few years back you could enjoy "Sega Manía" and watch people try to play Alex Kidd with their phones.

[@kvarnerinfoTV]

@@xmaverickhunterkx Alex Kid...hahah I remember that!

[@olik136]

in Germany too- later we also had those exact games as normal PC games

[@phrodendekia]

Adelante, elegí; estoy segura de que perderás

[@Eferor]

Also in Argentina

[@pxltr]

It was super popular in Poland, I remember even in late 00's we had Hugo branded drinks etc.

[@VSDeluxe]

In Germany it was also popular. And than Moorhuhn happends.

[@prodge64]

The Hugo soda was available in Sweden as well. It was green and tasted like most other green sodas - horrible.

[@swiftfox3461]

I remember this so vividly. With people panickedly mashing their phone keys to jump or whatever right after they trigger the "game over" scene 😂

[@kpc211]

If I remember well, this annoying music video was quite often shown on the TV station that showed Hugo in Poland (TV Polsat): kzbin.info/www/bejne/eIGveYqKr8mIkLs And it must have been on Polsat already in the late 1990s... The first year I remember is 1998 and I believe Hugo was already on air, even though they had one or two games only (for sure Ostrich / Struś). It's also interesting that it wasn't just a call-in - to register, you had to send in a postcard, or a letter with your photo, they were later showing on TV next to your name. I remember that the players constantly had troubles with pressing the buttons on time - probably due to the delay. Some of them were probably watching Polsat over the satellite, and even the terrestrial TV transmitters (especially those of private channels, like Polsat) often had satellite feeds back then.

[@PixelPolishTV]

@@kpc211 Oh god, you've reminded me of that dreadful Bartek Wrona song, you monster. Hugo was the shit though, for real ;)

[@mrpereza4518]

"A jugar con Hugo" was one of the most popular tv shows for kids in Argentina for 10 whole years, from 1996 to 2006.

[@pennysanchez7656]

Chile was also one of those that had Hugo pretty popular.

[@kurtk7521]

Turkey too. Seems Huge was international lol.@@pennysanchez7656

[@jannehautaviita]

It was hugely popular in Finland also. I remember watching it everytime it was on TV when I was kid. It was so fun to watch. Sadly I never had the courage to try and participate. Later when I got my first computer and managed to find Hugo game, I remember being very disappointed, because it wasn't the same thing when there was no host cheering you up while you were playing. :D

[@dsa3df3]

Herää pahvi! Nyt on tosi kyseessä.

[@jyrilaaksonen4065]

Meno Toijalaan. Jos perrrsaus kestää

[@mep6302]

*you were playing

[@SwitchAndLever]

Hugo was HUGE in Sweden. There was even soda pop with him on, a green colored orange soda if I remember correctly.

[@stskjer]

Huge here in Norway too, the phone stuff was so futuristic

[@noor-rx1ij]

Yes! I believe that was "Soff-i-Propp" featured in the video :-)

[@sumez4369]

As a Denmark resident I'll say I'm hugely impressed by the amount of research gone into this video! You got pretty much everything right. A little bit of insider information - in the first Hugo game, whenever a player reached the end and had to pick between three doors to see if they got the grand prize, the contents of the door was actually already picked randomly beforehand. This was due to the huge amount of animation data needed to be loaded into the Amiga's memory, so it was only able to fit one of them, ready to play the moment the player had picked his or her door. One more thing to note is that the telephone controlled TV game actually started earlier with the OsWald games, also featured in this video. At the time though, Silverrock didn't have the tech ready to process the dial inputs, and someone was actually sitting behind the scenes relaying every input manually.

[@KuMo]

Swedish person here! THANK YOU for making an episode about Hugo! I almost thought I'd dreamed him up because I've literally never seen him mentioned ever again since I was a kid.

[@guvbun04]

"P3 Spel" on Swedish radio station P3, did an entire episode about "Hugo". Well worth listening to. Here is the link to the podcast (in swedish). sverigesradio.se/sida/avsnitt/1257574?programid=4090

[@arturolejniczak5760]

He was very big in poland around early 2000 :). A lot of people are nostalgic about it and remember it.

[@jonasthemovie]

Okej kompis!

[@KuMo]

guvbun04 thank you! I will be listening to that!

[@RisingRevengeance]

Yeah Hugo was huge over here. Probably even more so in denmark for obvious reasons.

[@justletmelistthese]

Man, children calling Hugo with rotary phones was the saddest thing to me as a child. I hated Hugo because cartoons would air after and the darned thing would drag on forever.

[@TheJamieRamone]

Hugo was quite big here in Argentina.

[@andrevillalba]

Jamie Ramone yeah I remember coming back from school drinking Chocolatada and my mom CAGANDOME A PEDO PORQUE LLAMABA 30 VECES

[@jesuslobo3178]

Do you also remember kito pizzas?

[@TheJamieRamone]

@@jesuslobo3178 Don't think so.

[@euugato12]

@@jesuslobo3178 PIZZA CONMIGOOO♫♫

[@Cernunnos_83]

In Germany too 😊

[@Vokabre]

While i was a bit late to the party, i remember seeing a few short episodes of Hugo (renamed "Kuzya") on Russian TV. I never called of course, being too young, besides the sheer existence of the games was confusing, i thought as a kid it was staged. The thing was, by the 90s many people got rid of their rotary phones (not all, my grandparents had one until early 2000s), but most phones in Moscow still used pulse and not tone switch. The prices for calling too i'd imagine were rather unpleasant for parents. I think i once got gifted one of the Windows arcade minigames, but it seems it either did not run well, or was too boring so i only remember having a cd, and not really playing it. (By the way considering that Hugo is originally Danish, and Santa lives near Rovaniemi in Finland, the game's plot actually makes some geographical sense. *And the first story is probably a commentary of insufficient public transportation*).

[@jedimalone]

In Denmark, Santa lives in Greenland though :P

[@Vokabre]

​@@jedimalone There has to be an ultimate standoff between Greenland and Rovaniemi then!

[@Elenrai]

@Lassi Kinnunen hah!!

[@paveloleynikov4715]

If i remember correctly, there are landline Moscow phone, and in that era landline were still unlimited, extra pay were only for distant calls, so for locals it would be free. Also, at a time i thinked that it was rigged at selection of participants, being somewhat familiar with tone dialing (that strange funny beeps that do nothing) :)

[@TeardownOZ2CPU]

just to let you know, the ITE system 3000 did only contain ONE Amiga 3000, not two as you said, I designed and assembled and installed them, so i kind of know :-) the phone sound was detected as either DTMF tones or as clicks counted from phones not having the new DTMF system, the unit that did this we called a phone modem. The ITE system contained a MIDI sample player in full 16 bit strereo from AKAI

[@prodge64]

@BrackynMor I believe the problem was callers having rotary phones or not having their phone available in front of the TV. Nervousness would almost certainly also come into play as a little kid.

[@serpentine1983]

There was lag also. I remember that when listening to soccer games through radio at the same time as live TV we would hear 1 or 2 seconds before a goal on the radio. There was lag and there is little that can be done about it. Now with digital TV the lag is even bigger.

[@weinihao3632]

If I remember correctly, the version in German TV also allowed for voice commands. As a kid I always imagined that somebody sat behind the scenes pressing the buttons accordingly. Do you happen to know how that really worked?

[@TeardownOZ2CPU]

@@weinihao3632 I was the one installing both ITE 3000 systems in Germany, the Hugo versions and Crazy Cartoon Soccer, Nothing had any voice commands.

[@weinihao3632]

@@TeardownOZ2CPU Oh, sorry, you are right. I mixed it up with ZDF Teletaps. The graphics apparently also came from an Amiga.

[@Wacholder]

40 years ago they "streamed" Pong on a German TV Show, also via phone: but the two players had to hum/sing/shout into the phone in different pitches to move the paddle. Search KZbin for "Telespiele 1978", it´s weird :)

[@juliahengstermann193]

Mit Thomas Gottschalk wenn mich nicht alles täuscht. Das waren noch Zeiten 😁

[@jk9554]

I remember a later variation of this, where a ball was rolling "into" a scrolling 3D grid (wait, was it 3D? It could have been 2D and scrolling downwards... not too sure now) and you had to dodge obstacles on the way. That's what we called entertainment back then :D

[@Cernunnos_83]

@@jk9554 Sat 1 Superball. 😂 "Links, links... LINKS!" - "Oh, wie schade." 😅😅

[@estebann]

Here in Argentina it was "A Jugar con Hugo" ("Lets play with Hugo") ... so much memories from my childhood and so annoyed that people played so badly. Other one was "Kito Pizzas" as well, a game with a 3D delivery man

[@jesuslobo3178]

I really wanted to play hugo but i always dry my credit calling in vain. Also que me hago el ingles si soy de argentina.

[@Daimaah]

Unsurprisingly, Hugo was also well known in Finland as well. I was glued to the screen whenever the show was on. And so were my parents, that's how fascinating it was :)

[@ducafe00]

Wow, thanks a lot for giving back a glimpse of my childhood in Turkey! The show itself and its presenter still are of considerable importance for people born in the 90s and earlier; and a two-decades-long debate about whether a phone-in player used profane words on air (of which there are naturally no recordings!) still continues, with Tolga Abi purportedly refusing to comment on the matter.

[@proCaylak]

Yeah, that profanity was quite an urban legend. Also as far as I know, at first the show was just named as "Hugo", but participants were calling the host as "Hugo Abi" on the earlier broadcasts of the show which the host(Tolga Garipoğlu) didn't like it that way. So, in order to avoid this "Hugo Abi" issue, they renamed the show "Hugo ve Tolga Abi" later on.

[@halilsahin4238]

@@proCaylak Bu olay gerçekten yaşandı 🙄 mandela etkisi değil bir kaç gazetenin köşe yazısında bu olaydan bahsediliyordu

[@proCaylak]

@@halilsahin4238 Şu an izlenilebilir kayıtlarını bulamayınca işte, şehir efsanesi olarak söylediydim. Hem her şehir efsanesi yanlıştır diye bir şey yok ki. :D

[@halilsahin4238]

@@proCaylak :D

[@SamsTheBams]

Man I was obsessed with Hugo when I was a kid. Either my mom or dad made this vhs tape of people phoning in and playing, on eleva2ren. I watched that tape 24/7, I had all the games, t-shirts, plushies, the whole package.

[@ikis92]

Ah this was my childhood's most nostalgic memory! It was a big thing in Finland also :)

[@Zetagech]

The woman on the thumbail is Ivette Vergara, the presenter of the Chilean version of "Hugo" on TVN (aka TV Chile) circa 1995. I warched it as a kid :)

[@oleo007]

Here in Brazil was made a HUGE success !!

[@carloscanalesmorales]

wena compadre.

[@camilaxus]

Por la cresta como amaba a Ivette Vergara

[@PanchoMarconi]

5:02

[@pca1987]

I'm from Brazil and I remember Hugo.

[@ZakaTech]

Yes, very popular here in 90's!

[@LuminousWatcher]

FYI: eleva2eren (elevatoeren) means "the elevator" in Danish (the play being on the channel TV2)

[@amshermansen]

Beat me to it! But yeah - Unpossible to know as an outsider.

[@Ndlanding]

@@amshermansen Really? I'd have guessed it, so it wasn't impossible.

[@LuminousWatcher]

@@amshermansen The funny thing is: As I watched the start of the video I was thinking hey I thought it was a Danish only phenomenon, and then came the TV2 cheesy 90s TV recordings. brought back memories.

[@Azuris190]

@@LuminousWatcher Same thing here, only that i am in Germany, thought it was a small thing to make some quick money....

[@brostenen]

And we all had a crush on Nina.

[@nefty_plus]

In my country, Poland this was hugely popular. We even had a band that sang songs about Hugo (Hugo i przyjaciele) The show aired in 2000-2009, so for the whole decade.

[@GhostPurple69]

"I'm sure you're familiar with ZOOL..."

[@fuqupal]

Amiga's mascot failure

[@stingersplash]

I know I am. I loved it on megadrive!

[@ExtremeWreck]

Hey, I found the RSD Game Maker dude in this comment section!

[@goodall18]

Came here to post this same thing. Never thought someone would assume familiarity with zool.

[@beware_the_moose]

"left left left catch" Oh man...they were so awful

[@DennisSookhoo]

I could well remember that, in Denmark (Hugo) :D I also played it on PC, i remember it as a lot of fun "hvor skal vi hen du" :D

[@doguipreacher]

Hugo was big here in Argentina in the early 90s. And the hostess of the show is now a guest in a lot of retro gaming shows and cons.

[@Immopimmo]

Wow! The nostalgia! 😄 I remember being so impressed with Hugo and the fact you could play it live in front of all the other viewers through your phone. I'm from Sweden. :)

[@davidbjork5063]

I dont remember it was on Swedish tv? Anyway I remember when it was on finnish tv. Edit Såg det nu i beskrivningen. Intressant tv4 sände. Men såg väl den aldrig när jag kollade aldrig morgon tv 😉

[@nux3960]

:D

[@DIEGODOMAINS]

In Argentina was a succesful tv show. A jugar con Hugo was named

[@sonyericssoner]

Loved to watch Hugo, now i try to collect all the games . Nice to see someone cares about Hugo too :D

[@makitvvicentijevic7405]

I think here in Serbia Hugo was present for only a short time. That's because around 2002 we got our own tv dial game that was much more popular called Tajni Agent Izzy (Secret Agent Izzy). He was a blue cat that was trying to save his girlfriend Lora from a rat called Grin de Witt and his bulldog helper Hector. It ran for 7 years from 2002 to 2009, I literally think every child in that time here watched Izzy. He was on ice cream, had a theatre show, the games got released on PCs and there was much more merch. Unfortunately my mother never let me and my sister call in cause the bill for calling was massive.

[@u54w]

Remember seeing Hugo on TV. I was stunned by the graphics - This would end all graphics. My parents did not think I was ready to take my c64 skills to Copenhagen thou.

[@TheRestartPoint]

All these shoved-in car brand references, I felt like I was watching the Alan Partridge Xmas special.

[@tiikoni8742]

6:25 Ah! I remember this train game version of Hugo playing in Finland. I watched it multiple times and played once. Lag was not measured in milliseconds, but seconds :-)

[@arcuscotangens]

I remember seeing Hugo regularly on TV (in Germany), and some similar game about guiding a ball along a path full with obstacles (if memory serves, the ball was the logo of the channel Sat1). Even as a kid I always got the impression that the show hosts would deliberately pretend to not understand the commands on the phone so the callers never won. It was uncanny! Whenever a caller managed to get far in the game, at some point on the higher levels, the host would always misunderstand the command or not hear it at all... To be fair, I may just be remembering the blatant examples. But this really was a wake-up moment for little young me.

[@carlospulpo4205]

4:15 Wow a whole Amiga dedicated to decoding touch tone signals to create joystick directional output, ouch seems like overkill.

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

Wouldn't it have been simpler to design a dedicated circuit for that?

[@davidbjork5063]

They probably did this if some system would hang so not everything would not have a glitch...easier to search what is failing.

[@altebander2767]

In fact back then many modems would do DTMF decoding for you so you could just use an off the shelf device. My guess is that they either used 2 Amigas for redundancy (if one fails switch over to the other one) or that they had them create different layers of a more complex graphic. They had to be genlocked to the studio anyway so genlocking both and doing overlays certainly was an option. The $100k mark also seems way overblown as for that kind of money you could get an SGI, but with software and services that may have been the total cost per year or so.

[@tomsedragon]

There was only 1 Amiga 3000 (later it used the A4000), Nostalgia Nerd got his facts wrong. Connected to the Amiga, was amongst minor things, a time base corrector, and a sampler and of course dedicated hardware to handle DTMF. a picture of the front of the ITE3000 rack can be seen here datamuseum.dk/wiki/ITE_System_3000

[@Aiyoros]

Hugo also was very popular in Argentina in the "Magic Kids" channel. The winner of the day could won a bike. And each month, every winner could win a travel to Disney in Orlando...good memories

[@ShiyokoCL]

oh god, by some chance I remember seeing Hugo on TV; strange, seeing I was about 2-3 years old at the time (Chile, going by the '95 date seen on the video). Never played but it was fun watching everyone trying their hand at it.

[@Elenrai]

I can probably get you an original copy. Problem is it will probably be in Danish, seeing as the brand is still a thing here

[@adultmoshifan87]

I have the PlayStation version of Hugo, which I got back in the day shortly after I read about it in the magazines! It’s a rather good conversion, but it’s clearly not for serious gamers.

[@MCPicoli]

It was quite a hit here in Brazil. They did a very good translation work, and the game over lines, like "Não tem chororô, este jogo acabou" ou "Obrigado, caí sentado" among others kind of entered popular usage, being heard even today.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

"Left, left, left, stop...." - oh dear lag....

[@anotherdayanothervideotowa5763]

The show is also very popular in Vietnam (here, it's called "Vui cùng Hugo" (translated into Fun with Hugo)) between the late 90s and early 2000s.

[@lurkerrekrul]

Here in the U.S. in the early 80s, a New York station, WPIX, would air a daily segment in the afternoon where people could call in and play a video game over the phone. One was Intellivision's Space Battle and another was some generic game where a rectangle would travel up or down the screen and there was an angled paddle to fire a shot at it. In both games, players would yell "PIX" into the phone to fire. I'm not sure if they had a sound-activated switch attached to the console or if someone in the studio just pressed the button when the person yelled.

[@csikocska]

I wasn't quite sure that when I was a child I saw a television game show on a German TV channel in which you had to control a goblin by pressing the buttons on the phone until I saw your video content. I won't deny, it was so great to see a game show at Super RTL channel on CRT TV screens. Now I have certain memories about the goblin named Hugo. :)

[@plume...]

Oh Sarah Greene... In 89 when I was 10... be still my beating heart...

[@Vynny]

Hell mate. My name is Vynny Ward and I produced Games World, Gamesmaster and Reactive (beeb) and was adviser for Total Reality for the Beeb. I created the software that allows tones from phones to control basically all consoles at the time. It was also used on the bug breakfast and soccer am. We made hundreds of hours of "streaming" games for the UK and abroad. Many folks over 35 will remember the shows. If you ever want to know the nightmare that working on such shows was drop me a DM. More than happy to impart stories of my time on this. Cheers.

[@PixelPolishTV]

Oh I remember "TV games" and Hugo in particular. Never was allowed to call in and play though, so I was just sitting in front of a TV, cheering for whoever was playing at the time. Somehow the entire thing slipped my mind over the years, so thanks for a reminder 😁

[@MickeyKnox]

hahahaha, OMG ... when this show was aired here in Germany, I really thought it was developed in Germany and german only :-)

[@Grandmaster-G]

Yeah.. same here. I thought: ''no one else could possibly that stupid and play this crap''. Needless to say it was a huge hit, most of the people i knew back then where borderline addicted to it and i kept shaking my head... booting up my trusty C64 and playing lag-free...FOR FREE.

[@o03aTmE0o]

Haha. Yeah, i remember watching Hugo on Nickelodeon and viva back then. Was a big surprise to hear that Hugo was an Danish invention. Same with the Autobahn Raser Guys, davilex. Well. At least we got still Moorhuhn. So, yay I guess?

[@kiliansjoblom7535]

And i thought Hugo was only a finnish thing :D

[@FlyxDK]

As a dane born in 1990 this is an enormous blast of nostalgia! He was all over in Denmark, and i didn't ever think about him beeing a Danish invention.

[@BAIGAMING]

It is interesting to look at the earliest days of streaming! I remember I did this a long time ago, Justin TV in the mid 2000's you could use a TV tuner to livestream, but what people would see was your stream as a still image and you as a viewer had to refresh the screen to see a new image, and you kept doing that. Anyone remember this? I think I used an old school chat for viewers too and it was mostly a place for people to hang out, I remember playing the original version of Final Fantasy 12 in 2006 like this! I remember struggling bad with the game until I grinded levels in Giruvegan.

[@Marthyn96]

DUDE! I used to watch this back on the days.... the nostalgia...

[@Vaati1992]

Holy hell, I remember Hugo... IIRC I borrowed several Hugo compilation games from a friend of my sister and tried playing through them, but I'm not sure because he was hiding out deep in my brain, waiting to be unearthed by a KZbinr covering that bit of gaming history. Thanks for that xD

[@MD_Builds]

lol this is a nostalger blast from the past... I remember going live with the tv games :D Seeing the hugo clips are really hitting the mark... I remember wasting too much money trying to call the BBC hotline to try and play as I kept thinking I could do better than most of the other kids who called in.... Oh and merry Christmas from 20 miles away AAAANd that santa story part 1 is like the most distopian christmas ever...... And also just like real life :D

[@matiasl.ceballos3346]

ohhhh, "A jugar con Hugo". It was REALLY popular here in Argentina. Many still remember it to this day. I Remember watching it as a kid and getting really upset towards the kids playing it and calling them "slow". It seems that lag was turning me angry way before multiplayer games.

[@Duke_Togo_G13]

Saturday morning for me, was for cartoons, and the rest of the day was dedicated to my mongoose decade, and skateboarding.

[@lpoki8897]

Damn what a nostalgia bomb, I remember being at the edge of my seat watching kids call in to play Hugo. I didn't win anything from them getting through, I just wanted to see what was next in the game. I skipped over Hugo games at the flea markets and charity shops but now I wanna buy 'em.

[@PauloConstantino167]

As a kid, Hugo was a legend to me. Always wanted to play it but never was able to call.

[@Sparkykelly1]

I'm not gonna lie, that Santa story at the end was pure torture. 😂

[@irhdaur4279]

When I was a kid. There was a kid program show in irish with hugo as s sidekick speaking in irish with the host. Callers who called in had to as well speak in irish to play the tv games live.

[@rapidrick]

Hiudaí or some spelling variation of that !

[@morofry]

A significant part of the unavoidable lag experienced was due to how live tv was delivered to customers. For analog tv systems of old lag was entirely dependent on how far the signals (physically) and how many times the signal was converted along the way. Lag of over 3 seconds was commonplace for catv systems that use satellite receivers and around 1 second for those rich enough for fiber lines.

[@comagnum1]

As an American.. I've never heard of Hugo. It's ridiculous how popular it was, but it didn't make it to the US..

[@Saavik256]

In Slovenia, the TV version of Hugo was super popular in the early 90s, and I also had (surprisingly Danish language version) PC variants of some of those games.

[@JakonDeluxe]

I watched on TV in the 90s in Germany but never called in because our phone wasn't anywhere near the TV lol. Had the Game Boy Color game Hugo 2 1/2 though (which basically was just the Game Boy game Hugo 2 with color added and in a black cartridge). The game was pretty similar to the TV version. I was pretty surprised to learn there were Hugo games still on the DS and Wii.

[@VictorCampos87]

2:36 In Brazilian Portuguese: ENG _"Don't delay! I'm ready to play!"_ PTB _"Não demora! Se liga na hora!"_ >>> _"Don't delay! Stay ready on time!"_ ENG _"Let's go to the top without stop!"_ PTB _"Subindo a montanha sem fazer manha!"_ >>> _"Climbing the mountain without jiggery-pokery!"_

[@VictorCampos87]

Hugo style games are totally compatible with modern "one finger" mobile games of nowadays.

[@GeomancerHT]

Here in Argentina we had the Hugo games on TV, and many years later we found out they taped the show (wasn't live), and had the kids playing on a room separated from the studio, pretending to be on a real phone, as technology must have been extremely crappy back then.

[@Lone432345]

She dosn't look like Witch. More like a middle age Megan Fox.

[@BertGrink]

Yeah, you have a point there.

[@SloofmanPlays]

Massive fan of the later Hugo games but was unaware of his rich background! Thank you for the full story of Hugo

[@jorl17]

I loved this game as a kid! I had this exact Christmas version, the Portuguese (Portugal) one!

[@ChalkTeacher]

5:03 Chile! I remember always wanting to play when I was a kid but my mother would refuse saying the phone bill would skyrocket.

[@AlbioreGamera]

Tiza also remember that at the time you need to pay an extra fee only to get access to use the ”700” line service, of course, we didn't have at home 💁🏿‍♀️

[@fheedpexx9267]

HUGO! I'd forgotten about him! Had no idea he was a thing outside Sweden.

[@dpalmerama]

Wow the memories come flooding back from watching the games getting played on Saturday morning TV. Thank you for reminding me of the show's name! I had forgotten it decades ago lol. My brother amazingly got a Hugo game for the Playstation when we were in Switzerland called "Hugo and the Black Diamond". It was in French which helped us learn it but only one word comes to mind when thinking of it...merde!

[@theultumzero8491]

To be fair trying to control a video game over a tv broadcast is more or less how Stadia feels to play

[@TeruteruBozusama]

I remember having Hugo on the gameboy through a bootleg multicart. I remember seeing the other games but I don't really remember where.

[@TeruteruBozusama]

@@acidonia150 yup, I know a book series that'd be fun to mod the graphics into..!

[@sonicmario64]

Considering the fact that I'm not European, my first time seeing Hugo was actually when I learned that he was featured in the European version of the Game Boy game "Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle 2", which itself was actually a game starring Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters when it was originally released in Japan.

[@HugoM946]

Portuguese viewer here, this was pretty big here too. To my despair I was called Hugolina a big portion of my childhood.

[@annekariceisnice]

So much nostalgia! Thank you ❤️

[@JohnnyTheCache]

whoa i knew hugo from german TV but had no idea it was such an international thing. Funny it was the time when lots of people in germany already had satellite tv and the delay was certainly quite problematic for the concept.

[@paczilla4213]

This program was very popular in Brazil in the years 1995/1996

[@mixererunio1757]

Ah Trol Hugo. Wow it was a hit back in early 2000s in Poland. For most it was just a TV programme, not every household had a button-phone. Goddamn how has the world changed since those 15 years ago!

[@cms1138]

I'd completely forgotten about Hugo! I can remember him now though, so thanks! I think.

[@TheHypernaught]

30 years ago on Saturday mornings, we were all coming down from E's.

[@Seroth88]

I loved watching Hugo on Swedish television as a kid!

[@deswpNET]

I had one of the PS1 games as a kid. I didn't have any idea that it was part of a franchise, let alone such a huge one, until this very video.

[@SimonJustesen]

Oh, pleasant surprise. I'm used to Hugo speaking danish, so its funny to hear the other versions. I recall that the map layout of the mines in the original didn't change, so you could quite easily complete the game. Procedural generation of levels wasn't a thing back then ;)

[@Hunter1393B]

well i remember Hugo being a big thing here in Argentina when i was a child and it seems it was a european thing that we were lucky to experience

[@Michael500ca]

He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you are awake, He is stalking your freaking ass, so be good for goodness sake. Santa the mob boss.

[@royh4305]

Very good research dude... I am from Denmark btw. Thank you for another great video.

[@CCCW]

Germany was crazy about Hugo

[@bubba842]

God I remember this. Barely though. It must have been on "Going Live" or "Live and Kicking' on Saturday mornings. This is why I love your channel Pete. Bringing back memories that I didn't even know I had.

[@kaksikymmenta3]

I played this last summer in the Finnish Museum of Games. They actually had a telephone as controller. When Hugo was on TV we had rotary telephone...

[@benwinter5295]

The way these TV phone games worked was so frustrating to watch, let alone play, I imagine. I remember a UK show, 'Going Live' I think, that would have them sometimes. All you wanted to do was watch Duck Tales or whatever and you'd have to sit through 5-6 minutes of what I suspect was the Assistant Producer's Nephew frantically yelling 'LEFT!!! LEFT LEFT LEFT FIRE!', or blowing your TV speakers from the constant repetitive touch-tone sound, with almost no success! Do you KNOW how long 5-6 minutes seems when you're a ten year old with better video games than the BBC, and scarce attention span? lol. I also remember a game show from before my time, 'Golden Shot'. I think Bob Monkhouse hosted it, which was basically a phone call connected to a dart which was directed by the caller by saying 'up, down, left, right', and 'fire'. It was tedious, but I always wondered if this was technically a 'video game' as the voice is the controller, and there is in effect a video output to display the result of the input (the caller's TV at home). Good video NN, I thought I was the only person that remembered Hugo :) Didn't realise he was so popular everywhere

[@capscaps04]

Ah, I remeber Hugo. He was very populat here in Argentina. He lasted quite a long time. And they even gave prices to the kids who won the games. Of course, Hugo wasn't the only one who did something like this. There was also Kito pizza, and those two alien things that all their games consisted of two kids playing against each other with their phones.

[@OnlyEpicEmber]

The weekend morning TV show Toonattik actually had a Christmas game. It was a flash game where you played as the recurring character Postie throwing presents down chimneys from your sleigh. There was a price of I believe an Xbox 360 and a telly up for grabs for the person who got the highest score. I got into the top 10 a few times but I don't know who actually won.

[@airbornefilip9139]

Kid in, well, neighboring neighborhood won a motorbike. He became village celebrity. :]

[@thaismagalhaes5928]

Hugo was so popular in Brazil that phone lines in Sao Paulo went down because too many people were trying to call the network.

[@give_me_my_nick_back]

Hugo

[@jda.276]

I used to watch this as a kid in Portugal on both RTP1 (the Portuguese equivalent of BBC One) and RTP2 (the Portuguese equivalent of BBC Two and BBC Four) and loved it. I never called, though. I just recalled being frustrated because most of the participants would suck a lot when playing live on TV (little did I know about the impact of lag and such).

[@brannenthompson9662]

I always wanted to p[lay Hugo on TVjust to win a cool prize but I always thought there was someone sitting on the other end of the phone in the studio controlling the game. Thanks for another great video I'm sure others really appreciate the effort you make to bring back those great memories

[@JohnSmith-ii3cu]

I like how specific Santa is about those cars. I wonder if this actually happened to the writer or the narrator and they are still sore about it. 🤣

[@abooogeek]

Hugely popular in France as well (circa '93-'94?), with Karen Cheryll being the presenter of the show (usually occurring at 8:00p on France 3 channel). It was known as "Hugo Delire" (something like Delirious Hugo or Crazy Hugo), it was so cool to see a video game you could remotely play with your phone (remember that time you only could play games on your computer and consoles. Online gaming was limited to very basic games that you could play on the Minitel).

[@skynet0912]

I gotta say, having both watched the danish show and played the abysmal PS1 game, i never want to go back to this again... I found some old VHS tapes with episodes that my grandmother had recorded, and basicly no one who ever participated in the show with their phones had ever played a video game before, so most episodes came down to being a struggle for the participant to understand which button did what... Half the time they pressed the wrong buttons, and the other half of the time they didn't know their left from their right!

[@Lorten369]

Can you imagine how big it was here in denmark. Hugo was everywhere.

[@Nostalgianerd]

I choose not to imagine.

[@Lorten369]

@@Nostalgianerd hehe good. Looking back. Such a hideous character shouldn't be a kid's thing. But he was loved and we had fun seeing people lose over the telephone game. And annoyed. But ofc the delay was to blame :p

[@BertGrink]

@@Lorten369 But at least we could enjoy Nina Klinker Jørgensen's lovely visage ;)

[@Lorten369]

@@BertGrink aaaah yes. 💘 Fit for a prince back then. See what I did there. ;P