I distracted the pimp by using the remote on TV and selecting the right channel, but despite that the pimp took my money when I went up. This seems bit odd to me. In Larry 1 this trick worked, but here it didn't do anything and felt kind of pointless. So, now I'm wondering if it was some sort of bug or does it happen to everyone? Or did I miss something else, which I should also do to get up without paying.

Honestly, I think this version of Softporn is just hella bugged. For instance, doing "LOOK TV" prints a blank non-message until you turn it on. Only when the TV is already on does it tell you to use "TV ON" to turn on the TV. (You can imagine the trouble I had figuring out how to turn it on on my own! I got clued in when in despair I just typed "TV" by itself and it said "Huh?" instead of "I don't know how to TV something", which told me it recognizes TV as a verb.)

There are other versions of Softporn floating around; I haven't tried it myself yet, but I'd recommend trying the Z-machine version.

(EDIT: Apparently the Z-machine version is an early beta too. Maybe your best bet is to just play the original Apple II version...)

I must amend my post: this is not a bug in the game, and the Apple II version behaved similarly. In fact, the Apple II version didn't even let you turn the TV on at all at this point. I believe the purpose of the remote is to distract the pimp the second time you want to go upstairs (since for some reason the pimp won't let you, um, engage in her services again). It doesn't make much sense and I'm glad Al changed it when he made Leisure Suit Larry.

I tested it and pimp demands money (which you don't have at that point, because the first time was so expensive) even if you distract him with the TV.

Sounds like a bug, then. I've confirmed now that in the Apple II version the remote does in fact work as I described.

The Apple II version seems to have bugs of its own, though. At one point I tried listing my inventory and got dumped at a debugging prompt. It's possible that a complete, bug-free version of Softporn simply doesn't exist. There is a version I've yet to try, though, which is a version floating around that was written in Pascal. I think it runs on PCs and it's different from the one that was bundled with this GOG release.

OK, good to know. Bit disappointing that there's a bug, but then again if you have to go there second time then you have done something wrong.

Huh? If it's like LSL1 (I haven't played too far into Softporn in over a decade), which I think it is in this case, then you do have to go there twice. Once to get the candy, and once to get to the fire escape and get the pills, for which you need the rope, and you can't get the rope until you've given the candy away.

Apologies if I'm wrong on this, though. Again, I haven't played through this game in many years...

You are correct. My memory failed me, since it was 5 months ago when I actually played this and all I was thinking earlier today was that you can get the lubber before going up, so you don't have to go there and then go back down again, because you weren't prepared. In any case making money with save scumming is as easy in this game as it is in LSL1.

Do win I win something for finding and bumping this other than my free copy of "Soft Porn Adventure"?

I recently replayed the game. During that replay I visited up there three times. First two times I had to pay to the pimp, but third time the remote controller trick worked and pimp ignored me. So, it seems that it is not bugged every time you go up.