27 Aug 2025
Come in and listen a bit to this weird little guy.
I first learned of Hugo from watching the professional Mr. Do! player, Sebmal. He’s got a system set up on his stream where people can set bounties for RetroAchievements which he’s gotta’ try and complete within 30 minutes. A few came across his plate for Hugo games, and it is some of the roughest gameplay to watch.
Hugo, the squat Danish troll, hails from a TV game show called “Hugo” where players could call in and use their touchtone phones to dial in directions for Hugo to take during the game; dodging logs, or jumping between rafts. It was incredibly tough, as kids at home had a large amount of latency between seeing Hugo on tv, dialing in a command, Hugo taking that action, and then seeing that happen at home. Home versions were created that kept the original game show levels, but also added an Arcade mode with limited lives.
Hugo himself would be lively during these games, lamenting when his ass got blown up or tellng the player to get their act together. Unfortunately, Hugo’s throat is filled with marbles in every translation. The end goal of the game is to rescue Hugo’s family, but you don’t gotta’. There’s probably other things you could do.
Hugo is a repulsive little guy, and that leads to an obsession with the repulsive little guy that reveals amazing things. At one point during a Sebmal stream, the Hugo Rap was played. Weirdly, it slapped? I looked into where it was released, and then discovered it had been released on vinyl. Along with several other Hugo-related songs. And the vinyl disc was a goddamn picture disc. One quick Discogs search later and one moderate shipping trip from Italy after that, and the Skærmtrolden Hugo – Ta Det Bare Roligt vinyl picture disc album was in my hands.
I don’t want to hold this all to myself though. I want to share with everyone reading the music of Hugo. His fucking voice. How the album has multiple good songs. That’s why a while back I made a full recording of the album Skærmtrolden Hugo – Ta Det Bare Roligt on my record player. The disc has some noise during a few songs, but for the most part it sounds great. Please, enjoy.
There’s song chapters so you can skip around to the song you want to hear. The video’s unlisted so I don’t know if publically posting it will now get it yanked, but please enjoy the sounds while you can. Apologies if you’re in the future and this video no longer works.
