It's a safe bet to say that most gamers have never heard of the game Top Shop. It's also safe to say that the publisher "A1 Games" is not very well recognized either. They're best known for their generically titled games like Billiards and Tennis. All in all, they're generally overlooked from the common crowd, and deservedly so. Most of their games are as generic as their titles: not a whole bunch of unlockable features, and a very bland style of gameplay. But amidst the releases of all the mundane games from A1 was a true gem; unfortunately it was just as unnoticed as all the others. This game is none other than Top Shop, the American version of the popular "Tenant Wars Alpha" in Japan.
The idea of the game sounds a little less fun than it actually is; it's also kind of difficult to describe. It's a vertical board game; yes, you heard right, vertical. The gameplay is somewhat similar to Monopoly; the underlying point is to buy as much property as possible and earn money from opponents from those properties. However, instead of Marvin Gardens and Boardwalk, it's Yamato Music and Bobsons Ice Cream Parlor.
The boards are in the form of malls, and as with many malls, there are several floors; there are escalators and elevators to take players up to higher parts of the board. On a player's turn, the player rolls a pencil (yes, a pencil!) instead of a die, and moves the number of spaces shown on the pencil. Each time a player lands on an empty space, a list of possible stores comes up to buy. Then, if an opponent lands on that store, he must buy an item in that store's inventory. The owner must keep the inventory as full as possible however, because if the store is out of items, another player can come up and replace the store with one of his own. If a player happens to land on a space directly next to his store, he can expand that store and have more room in its inventory and stock it with more expensive items. The game asks at the beginning what the "Target Assets" total is going to be; once a player reaches that amount of assets (money), the game ends.
The game is playable for up to six players, but there must be at least four (computers fill in if necessary). There's quite a selection of characters to choose from, ranging anywhere from a male cat to a purple blob of unknown gender. There's a forgettable story mode in which the player controls the main character, Meower, and must go through a "story" where Meower has to play against every one of the characters. This is the way to unlock the extra characters, but the entire process proves to be boring. However, as a multiplayer game, Top Shop shines. Even if it doesn't sound that fun in text, virtually any gamer who plays this with his friends is going to be hooked.
So why has no one heard of this addictive party game? Well, there's the matter that it was published by A1 Games, a very small company. They have next to no money for any advertising at all. The game was also not distributed in large volumes; and most copies that did hit stores actually went directly to the bargain bins. Not one video game journalism site or magazine reviewed the game, which also lead to the terrible fate of the game.
Also, the game was released just a couple months after the debut of the Playstation 2, despite the fact that development on it started well before the PS2 hit shelves. In effect, Sony fans had traded in their Playstations to get the next console and were focused solely on PS2 titles. The original Playstation still hadn't had its price drop, so people not wealthy enough to get the latest consoles probably still weren't able to buy an original PSX. When the price did drop, Top Shop was already unavailable at many retailers. The element of being in the wrong place at the wrong time definitely took its toll on this title that could have been a major success. If the game had gotten the attention it deserved, it could have well been another Mario Party.
