Top Shop is a video game developed by KID (the company behind the Infinity series) for the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation. It was originally released in 1998 in Japan, where it was self-published. The PlayStation version saw a North American release in 2001, published by A1 Games.
The game is similar to Monopoly, but more focused on property management. It takes place in a mall, where different tenants battle each other for control of the properties. After landing on, purchasing, and building a store on an unowned space, the tenant's opponents can land on that space and be forced to purchase something from the store. However, if the store runs out of stock, they can steal that property from the current owner... if they can afford it. Store owners themselves can expand their stores (increasing the max items each section can hold and allowing them to stock increasingly expensive items) if they land in spaces next to an existing store in the block, to a maximum of a four-space store that fills the block entirely. Additionally, everyone can accumulate 'points' that can be exchanged at the bank (effectively the "Go" space) to either improve their situation, screw over other players, do both at once, or do other miscellaneous things.
There are two gameplay modes: Free Play and Story Mode. The story mode follows a cat named Meower, whose main goal is to become rich. In Free Play, up to six players (all of which can be substituted with AI bots if desired) can play, in addition to allowing the players to tweak the victory conditions. That said, whichever mode the player selects, their goal is to either amass a given amount of combined cash-on-hand and assets, or to bankrupt a given number of players (not necessarily all of them, in which case it would be a good idea to be in first place beforehand).
Nothing to do with the British fashion chain of the same name.
Top Shop contains examples of the following tropes:
- Animate Inanimate Object: One of the playable characters is Dona, a cactus that cruises around the board in a wheeled pot.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: No matter who you're playing as, specific parts of their outfit or character design will be recolored to represent which player they are once the game starts.
- Console Cameo:
- The PlayStation console is used as a symbol to represent AI players.
- A PlayStation controller appears in the in-game menu. Selecting it brings up the configurations menu.
- HP to 1: Point items exist that reduce a player's money to exactly one unit. The cheap one does it to one player, and the more expensive one does it to everyone who isn't the person using it. Great for potentially forcing a lot of store closures when used properly (IE, your opponents aren't near the bank, and they're likely to either pay for items and/or nobody's near their stores), as nothing costs that little to buy.
- Instant-Win Condition: If you're able to score 99 'points', you can choose to straight-up declare victory the next time you pass the bank. That said, you must first obtain those 99 points, which can only be gotten from either getting event cards or paying for your opponents' items once you land on their spaces, the amount of points you get for item buys scales to the cost of the item (and even then you don't get more than like 5-7 points for the very most expensive items), you don't always get points for this anyway, and since the next most-expensive point item costs 50 points, any other player with any sense is going to realize what you're up to well before you come anywhere close to 99 and buy the point item which erases half of your points. So good luck with that.
- The Mall: The game boards are malls, each with a different theme.
- Multi-Platform: The game was released for the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation on the same day. Only the PlayStation version made it overseas, though.
- Save-Game Limits: While you've got four save slots, you only get one opportunity to save your game in April of every game year, IE, once every 12 turns. This is true in both Story Mode and Free Play.
- Video Game Time: A month passes every round, despite each round taking only a minute or so. Each month gets a nice start-of-turn graphic, though.
