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This is a page dedicated to some of the secrets I’ve teased out of a piece of software that made a big impression on me as a kid. I was always a creative kid, and Hollywood High exposed an entire new world to me.
Hollywood High is a piece of creative writing software first released in 1996 by Theatrix Interactive. It is a sequel to the hit title ‘Hollywood’, a version which featured only cartoon characters. This title features teenaged human characters and cartoony airbrushed backdrops based on life in the 90s.
The program has users type dialogue into a blank page, direct individual characters, and construct a play, direction by direction. The game would then use the OS’s embedded text-to-voice service to read the script out loud. Hollywood High was part of a trend in the late 90s aimed at building software for kids to build experience with everything from scriptwriting, to film, to stage direction.
It was released on Windows 95, Windows 3.1, and Macintosh CD-ROM. It is currently owned by the Scholastic Corporation, but all trademarks and registers have since expired.
One cool feature of ‘Hollywood High’ is that they’d allow you to use an ‘Unlock Hollywood’ application included to add the assets from ‘Hollywood’ into ‘High.’ Way back when the software was released, it cost something like $15 and a phone call to a nice lady to get the unlock key.
This service, like Theatrix Interactive, is long gone. Both pieces of software are effectively abandonware. How do you unlock it?
Thankfully, the user dwagonfwy on the forum GamingSteve.com provided their configuration file from an unlocked copy of Hollywood High. You can follow these directions to get access to the full suite of content, as long as you have Hollywood and Hollywood High installed on the same machine.
The application determines its status as ‘unlocked’ by attempting to find an appropriate serial code in C:\\WINDOWS\\theatrix.ini (or a similar system root). You have to run Hollywood High at least once to generate it.
Open this file in Notepad and replace the contents with the following:
Code: [Select]
[CVPP]
ID950=MW
ID952=rite
ID951=FFSC2
Boot Hollywood High, and your game should be unlocked! Enjoy!
A section dedicated to my research into hacking Hollywood High.