Game Journal: Hop Top (1 Credit Clear, high score run)

I got a 1 credit clear of Hop Top, a 2024 shoot em up platformer by Miracle for the PC.

Hop Top contains both an Arcade mode inspired by early 1980s arcade games, and a Campaign mode inspired by mid-90s arcades remakes of those games. It's like Pac-Man and Pac-Man Arrangement, or Tank Battalion and Tank Force. Hop Top also has an Endless mode that lets you play an endless version of any of campaign mode's four stages.

It's a fantastic game! I'm a big fan of that era of arcade games (e.g. Son Son, Elevator Action, Pengo, Pooyan, Gaplus, Donkey Kong 3) and Hop Top fits right into that lineup. It's the most authentic-feeling arcade-style modern game I have ever played, and I truly think that if someone told me this was a genuine undiscovered arcade game I would have believed them.

My main issue with campaign mode is that the its difficulty doesn't escalate quite as much as I wanted it to, and the scoring system feels too underbaked for me to want to push my score further. Unless I'm missing something, the only ways to get a higher score are to clear the game as fast as possible while collecting the single balloon and 1up item in each stage and taking as few hits as possible (for an endgame bonus of 10000 points per life remaining). I expected the game to have a more extensive secondary scoring layer along the lines of Son Son's fruit, Mr. Driller's air capsules or Pac-Man's bonus for taking out all four ghosts with a single power pellet, so the scoring system would represent more than just clearing the game fast without dying.

But clearing the game still took me a good three hours and I already have a lot of experience in these kinds of arcade games, so I imagine that it will provide a lot of playtime for people who are newer to the genre.

My other main issue is that the in-game autofire lets you fire at a significantly slower rate than simply mashing the button, meaning that you're at an advantage if you use external autofire or can mash a button really fast. I chose to simply ignore this as best I could, and just used the built-in autofire.

And yes I typo'd my initials as CTA instead of CTM on the high score screen at the end. Oops.

Endless mode

The built-in high score for Hop Top's endless mode is 100,000, which is a fun goal to work towards if you want more of a challenge after clearing campaign mode:

At this point I'm all Hop Topped out, but I had a great time. Hop Top is available on Steam and I highly recommend picking it up!