What did many of us do Saturday morning's before the likes of the internet, and excessive
weekend working hours?
*INTENSE BMX ACTION*
Well, apart from that...
We watched Saturday morning TV.
Saturday morning TV was like a variety show.
An entire channel of variety stuffed into it's own program, and poured out to anticipating
viewers, usually in a live fashion.
Apart from Swap Shops, Gophers, Comedy sketches, this guy, and Yvette Fielding's guess the
girth, we had phone in games.
These were games that, us, common viewers could phone in, and play live to the nation.
In effect, one of the first streaming services.
The majority of us, would sit there and watch some kid, desperately try to navigate their
way through a game, either by shouting controls down the phone, or, if you had a digital keypad
equipped phone, by using your phone's buttons.
Cutting edge stuff.
If you played well, you might get a prize, but as you can imagine, this was rarely the
case.
For starters, you needed to have your landline (bear in mind, this was before most people
had a mobile) in view of the TV, so you could see what you were doing, but even then, you
had to deal with the god awful lag.
Roblox players wouldn't know what to do with themselves.
The games were varied, but one most of Europe will likely remember was Hugo the Troll.
And I say Europe, because, although we witnessed this little character in the UK a few times,
he was infinitely more popular in other European regions.
For us, you probably remember him from series 2 of CITV's What's Up Doc, airing from the
4th September 1993 onwards.
"computer games, you've heard of Sonic the Hedgehog. You've heard of Mario the plumber"
I'm sure you're familiar with Zool, Lemmings and Cool Spot, but I want to introduce you to a brand new character now
This is Whats Up Docs own computer character, his name is Hugo the Troll. You're gonna be seeing a lot of him in the future. Here he is...
"Don't delay, I'm ready to play!"
"Let's go for the top, without a stop!"
BUT, his history goes further back than that.
In fact, it goes all the way back to Denmark in 1990, and the media company SilverRock
Productions, that would later change its name to ITE, or Interactive Television Entertainment.
You see, SilvverRock realised that with the furiously expanding market of gaming, interactive
gaming might be a path to the future.
Their first tentative steps were with an Amiga game called OsWALD Of the Ice Floes, featuring
a titular polar bear, which had some success.
The demand from the Danish channel TV2 led them to create Hugo the TV troll, which would
quickly expand the company to 19 employees.
Airing on TV2's prime time show Eleva2Ren - which was really an Friday night version
of Saturday morning TV - the "Hugo Game Show" was significantly more successful, with viewers
really latching on to the interactive streaming concept, and growing a connection to this
strange little troll.
*DANISH*
Establishing convention, lucky callers would control Hugo using the digits of their phone,
in a bid to win a prize.
The system in charge of all this was called the $100,000 custom built ITE 3000, mainly
consisting of two Amiga 3000's coupled together, one to convert the incoming phone signals,
the other to run the game, all in as lag free fashion as possible.
The concept was prominently featured on the show from September 1990 to May 1995, with
different game variations appearing after the first year.
All of which would find their way to home computer platforms, in mini-game bundles,
including, of course the Amiga and PC but also the humble Commodore 64, which plays
pretty well.
In that time, the show was licenced to more than 40 other TV shows around the world, ingraining
Hugo the Troll as a well known, if perhaps sideline, video game / TV character.
During 1992 in Spain, a whopping 25% of the population regularly tuned in to witness this
guy being streamed to the public, which is pretty staggering.
American viewers may have also got a glimpse of him through domestic Spanish channels.
Over in Sweden, Hugo's show was declared the best rated children's presentation ever and
over in Brazil 1.8 million people were calling every day to the Hugo Hot Line.
In fact, an entire empire would be built around this little guy, including Playstation games,
Java games, merchandise, music and even a recent feature film called Hugo; The World's
Worst Comeback... and given the film hasn't emerged since it's 2012 announcement date,
it really is the World's Worst Comeback.
But yes, as you might expect, with those credentials, this guy is still going.
But, what I'm interested in today, are the TV show games themselves, or at least, those
ones spun off into video games packages, released worldwide on various platforms from 1990 up
until the present day.
For us, UK dwellers, the Amiga release wasn't until 1994, with most games converted and
localised again, by ITE, but released by various publishers, including SuperVision in the UK
and NBG Multimedia in Germany.
The mini-games themselves, were bundled into collections, and mostly graphically improved,
depending on the platform, but still, received pretty pitiful reviews.
I mean, these remained simple Quick Time TV Games, cashing in on their popularity, simply
wrapped up with a story and navigational interface.
The story, by the way, usually involved, a witch, called Scylla (or a variety of other
names depending on your region), and she either kidnap's Hugo's kids (Rit, Rat and Rut), or
does something to disrupt the day, which we of course, must fix.
"Hugo will NEVER get his Hugolina back... Mwahahahahaha"
There was even a Christmas version, and that's what I'm focusing on now....
"You may remember last year, we looked at a digital advent calendar, in a sort of Christmas
tradition.
This time it's going to be a program called Hugo, for Windows 95 and compatible Pentium
computers.
So, let's have a look and see what Hugo has in store for us"
... I'll be honest, this started out as a Christmas advent video about Hugo the Christmas
troll, but quickly turned into a historical fact expedition.
But here, I'm drawing the line.
From this point forward, we're going Christmas Troll....
More specifically known as, Hugo: Winter Games, Hugo: PC Calendar, or in my case, Hugo's Interactive
Christmas Calendar.
This was a program that could picked up alongside your lightweight shareware titles in PC World,
or even on a coverdisk.
Hence the flimsy, lightweight appearance of my copy.
Published in 1997 by ITE, this was the first Hugo Christmas themed game, with Hugo Saves
Christmas and Hugo: Scylla's Revenge following in subsequent years.
To load our Christmas extravaganza, we simply pop the CD-ROM in the drive, and run it directly
from the disc.
There's nothing to install here, whatsoever.
Initially, we're greeted with an intro sequence, showing Father Christmas snoozing in his warm
home, but wait, that evil witch is outside.
Of course, only Hugo, the plane flying troll can save the day, and Santa's
village, and so we begin.
Now, the premise isn't really clear here, but apparently Scylla has turned all the elves
to ice, and we have to take her down through a series of mini-games.
Apparently, Santa doesn't give much of a crap, because he remains fast asleep in his chair.
Either that, or he has severe narcolepsy.
If we click on his jolly face, he instantly wakes up and starts reading a story.
"The sound of Christmas music blares from overhead speakers... tralalalala lala lala"
Puppy tales and Santa Clauses wave from the shop windows, welcoming shoppers. People have been driving around for hours, trying to find a parking space.
"At last a free parking space appears"
"A small olive Skoda darts forward, snatching the vacant spot"
"Much to the annoyance of the drivers of the dark blue BMW and the black VW Golf"
A story filled with more automotive manufacturer names than I was expecting...
"Ready to begin their Christmas shop"
Woah! He looks quite sinister there, doesn't he?!
and a quite sinister close up of his face.
Yes, this is the advent story, and really why the game was sold as PC Calendar.
We can flick through each day of the story using the icon to the top left of the screen,
but we'll come back to that later.
At the end of each segment, he passes out as quickly as he wakes, and we're left to
explore the house.
This is where the bulk of entertainment takes place.
Each area has a number of those mini-games, and if we click, we're launched straight into
the action.
Most of the mini games are unique to this release, but the ones in this initial room
are all taken from the TV show.
From present catching to snowboarding, you even get the original phone direction buttons
appearing on screen, although you can just use the arrow keys to control.
Another TV game, is this Sleigh affair, requiring you to jump at a specific time.
You get a good time allowance to make each jump, demonstrating how they got around the
lag issue on the show itself.
Various animations appear throughout, and sometimes the action changes, requiring a
different strategy.
There doesn't seem to be a goal to these games, other than to get a high score.
Anyway, let's head to the hallway.
Here the games get more puzzle oriented.
Such as closing all these draws, or moving the cogs around in the clock, in order to
"make sure the time is right", although how we're supposed to do that without actually
knowing the time is ANYONE's business.
You can find a puzzle, when the cursor turns to a question mark, then once you've successfully
solved it, you'll get
a "thumbs up" instead.
So, we can simply amble from room to room, solving task after task, until our heart is
content.
Some are musical in nature, other's geographical.
It's actually quite a good assortment.
The kind of thing, I would definitely have played on the run up to Christmas, to, y'know,
get in the festive spirit.
Whilst wishing that I would get a 3DFX hardware upgrade from Santa, so I could run better
games.
Once you're bored of the house, you can go outside to the village, and fix anything from
clogged sinks, to nonchalant reindeer.
But, the trick is, you can go to the Christmas tree in the middle at ANY time, and take on
the witch.
Simply hit her with 3 snowballs, and she's down, and frozen into a block of ice.
We then get the game credits.
Yep, that's it folks.
We've completed the game.
Without even finishing all the puzzles.
THIS then, is very much a multimedia PC game.
A program to just open up and mess around with in moments of boredom.
You can see why this concept did not translate well to the European Playstation, or even
Gameboy releases.
But for Christmas, it's a nice novelty.
It's enjoyable.
It's festive.
And so, let's get back to our annual tradition shall we.
Last year, we looked at a god awful Windows 3.1 advent calendar, so this near, it seems
appropriate to listen to St. Nicholases story every day.
I'm going to leave you with the first two parts, and then each subsequent part will
continue daily on my Extra channel, a link to which is provided in the video description.
Day one, of advent.
"The sound of Christmas music blaring out from overhead speakers.
tra la la la laa la la la laa
Puppy tales and Santa Clauses wave from the shop windows
welcoming shoppers
people have been driving around for hours, trying to find a parking space.
at last a free parking space appears
A small olive green Skoda, darts forward, snatching the vacant spot.
much to the annoyance of the drivers of the dark blue BMW and the black VW Golf.
A ginger haired boy jumps out of the car, together with his mother. Ready to begin their Christmas shopping.
'Come on mum' he shouts, and disappears among the Christmas shoppers.
The shopping centre is open late, and there are 24 days left until Christmas.
Never the less, people seem stressed. The shop assistants look tired and weary amidst the general atmosphere of chaos.
'Mum! I want all the toys in this shop!'
'Would the mother of Cynthia Barnes, aged 7, please come to the perfume department, thank you!'
BUY NOW PAY LATER!
'We can't afford that! Find something cheaper!
'Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!
The ginger haired boy, notices Santa Claus and bounds towards him
He pushes everyone else aside, landing with a hop, in Santa's lap (someone should teach this kid some manners)
HOHOHOHO. WHAT DO YOU WANT LITTLE BOY?
'An ice hockey stick. But you're not the real Santa, so you can't grant my wish'
'Oh yes I am'
'Let me tell you about how I became the real Santa Claus'
*snores*
Day number two...
A long long time ago, before Santa Claus became Santa Claus
his name was Rumble.
He was just a little boy, who lived with their parents at their manor farm.
It was the biggest of the farms in that part of the country. Except perhaps for Santa's farm and a few others.
Rumble's father was a very fine and highly respected Elf.
Many of the towns people worked at the farm. He was a true manor elf.
Rumble was an only child, so it was always assumed he would take over the farm, after his father.
Rumble, however, found it hard to live up to this heavy responsibility.
He didn't do well at school, and repeatedly failed his exams.
The town where he lived was a real country town.
Just outside it's limits, was a lake.
In the summer, you could go swimming there, and in the winter, it made an ideal skating rink.
Rumble was a good ice skater. So good in fact, that he spent all day playing ice hockey, in the hope of turning professional.
His father strongly disapproved of these plans.
That was Hugo's Christmas CD, and I'll see you on the other side.
Thanks for watching and have a great evening.
[Hip hop festive tunes to sound out]