Posted By
MIK
on 2014-08-20
11:03:49
 |  Re: Hollywood Poker: The biggest commercial...
The real TAPE:
Like most games from Players, Hollywood Poker was never saved with a Turbo Loader which makes it the biggest and longest loading commercial tape game of all if you play all 4 Girls in turn. This one is only for the brave!
The genuine real tape of Hollywood Poker released by Players running on a real Plus4 does not work properly if you follow the loading instructions from the cassette cover! I have two copies and both hang after loading is finished on side 1 if you use LOAD from BASIC. Either it was saved wrong to the tape which I'm sure it was, or it was done to stop children from playing it with the thinking an adult would have a better understanding of what to do... I doubt that was the case though! 
In short on a real Plus4 you have to enter the monitor and type L"",1 and after FOUND the game will load for a short while and then you need to type from the monitor G1010. The game then loads correctly on side1 and in turn allows you to play the whole game normally.
Hollywood Poker uses both sides of the tape.
Side1: Game Data
Once loaded your asked to turn the tape over and rewind to load the first Girl Isabell.
Side2: Girl Data
Contains all 4 Girls being
1. Isabell
2. Lorence
3. Denise
4. Stephanie
To play a Girl you press which number she is so if Girl 1 is loaded your press key 1 to play her. If the game is over and you wish to play Girl 1 again then press 1 again, no loading is required as she is already in memory, (unlike the D64 version).
I'll take a picture when I can but there are 2 different covers of the Players version. It's a bit of a spot the difference as a silly small change was made but as +4 commercial releases were not that common this cover is very unique! 
TAP version:
Obviously it comes as two tap images.
Hollywood Poker Side1
Hollywood Poker Side2
Having only tested the game with Yape there might be a couple of issues with the way Yape loads tapes. I believe the tap's are fine as the real game on the real tape was saved with the normal kernel save routine. Nothing special at all for Yape or MTAP to work with!
One problem with Yape is that the game actually loads perfectly from BASIC using LOAD unlike the real machine.
The first 3 Girls loaded perfectly, however once the last Girl had finally loaded the game was now displaying in the wrong graphics mode yet it had not crashed! I started playing it blind hoping I would lose the game knowing once it goes back to the title screen it will refresh the screen and display properly... sure enough Girl 4 displayed properly!!
I then loaded Girl 1 back in, she loaded fine.
I then press key 4 to skip the others and only load Girl 4 and this time she displayed perfectly!!!
Maybe something to do with Yape why that might of happened?
The last issue Yape has is that once a Girl has fully loaded it does not automatically stop the tape! Is does on a real plus/4, so if you load the first Girl on tap be ready to hit SHIFT & F5 to stop the tape running over. Could this be linked to a line of BASIC or Machine code being a byte out in memory with how it loads in YAPE when normally it should not?
Obviously the original tape release is at fault and a way round that can be done to play it, just Yape having done amazingly has a couple of hick ups maybe?
What I'll do is I'll upload the tap's to Plus4 World so either Luca and Csabo can add them, hopefully Gaia can get a moment to have a look.
If it proves side 2 needs looking at then I'll dig a brand new 1531 out and record it again off of that one! The 1531 I did use to create the TAP loads the game fine on the real machine! 
TAP Loading & timer info:
Type Load
after a short while at the READY type RUN. The game will now load.
On the Yape tap timer on the bottom left corner this is how long it takes from the start of the tape each side until something has loaded.
Side1: 10.25
attach Tape 2 when told to turn tape over.
Side 2:
Isabell: 8.50
Lorence: 19.10
Denise: 27.24
Stephanie: 37.24
*** As soon as a Girl has loaded don't forget to STOP the tape! ***
Hope that's all clear, any questions you know what to do.
BTW there is no rush, it's a slow loading game so take ya time if you fancy a look.
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