1st Year by Dan DelaRosa
A Terrible Game Review by Paul Harrington
Download Here



Castle Paradox is currently home to the largest collection of OHR games on the internet, and launched in early 2003. I thought it might be a good idea to take a look back at the very first game ever uploaded to the site, to see how much things have changed in the last five and a half years. Would it be terrible? Nostalgic? Inspiring?



Sandsea.bmp title screen? All walkabouts identical except for colors? Sub-Walthrus graphics? Single screen maps? Yeah, this is terrible.

Dan DelaRosa's 1st Year (Or, according to the title screen, The Golden Age Year 1) is bad in just about every way, but at least it's short. In fact, there's almost no content at all. But never fear! We can still pretend there's something here to discuss!

The hero is named Dan, after the game's author. This is to be expected in any generically awful OHR game. He is some sort of large-eyed mutant, whose brown, rectangular head gives him a resemblance to ET. Dan lives with two other mutants who are identical to him aside from a lighter skin tone. One of Dan's housemates/parents/lovers asks him to take a rest, which doesn't sound like a while lot of fun given that the only furniture in the house is a table. It's a pretty big house, and crafty residents could make something nice out of it, but Dan's minimalist brotherhood has decided to keep things simple. His other friend/partner/grandma gives him loaves of bread. Keep talking to this person and you'll keep getting more bread. A growing extraterrestrial needs to be well fed!

Outside of the house, you can commit acts of violence against BADMEN. BADMEN are just like Dan but with a poorer sense of fashion and no arms.



The battle backdrops are among the worst I've ever seen, including ones made for Terrible Games Contests. This would suggest that The 1st Year is a joke game, but the total lack of humor in any degree would suggest otherwise.



Aside from abusing crippled men and eating bread, there's not a whole lot else to do here. You can speak to a homeless golem made of gold and take his boots. You can't equip the boots, in spite of having the same size feet. This monster tells you that you've reached the end of the demo, but don't be fooled!



You can still assualt your neighbors and visit a a shop that sells bread and swords. If the bread you can get for free from home isn't good enough for you, you can buy some here for $10 a loaf! And if you're turned on by economic failure and destroying local business, you can rob the shop's owner by selling his own bread back to him for $750. You can then buy 75 more loaves, or save up to $1000 to buy a sword that you can't use.

So what does this game teach us? We can see that although some people considered this time the GOLDEN AGE OF OHR GAMES, there were a lot of unfathomably bad games being released. Proportionally, I'd say games from this era were far worse than what's being released using this engine today. We see far fewer games released now, but even the really bad games that we do see (Yo Ghost and its ilk) are better than this. This game also teaches us that with minimal effort and a total of five minutes, you can release your very own RPG and possibly have it discussed in an online magazine! Thank you, Dan DelaRosa, for teaching America's children this important lesson.