Welcome to the first installment of a new feature here at GameCritics.com—the Bargain Basement. It’s as sure as death or taxes that anyone who takes up videogaming as a hobby or profession will find themselves eventually rooting through a bargain bin at one point or another.

Welcome to the second edition of the Bargain Basement. It’s as sure as death or taxes that anyone who takes up videogaming as a hobby or profession will find themselves rooting through a bargain bin at one point or another.

After forcing myself to sit through Final Fantasy VIII and The Legend Of Dragoon, I appreciate any game or developer that does away with prerendered 2D backgrounds. Though not always as pretty, 3D graphics like those found in the game add a level of interactivity—and dare I say realism—that the aforementioned titles were missing.

Grandia II isn't a landmark game by any means, but it comes pretty close to being an amazing role-playing game done in the traditional style. It looks great, has solid gameplay, great characters and a well-written story, but it's basically as straight-forward a role-playing game as you're likely to find.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Animated Violence, Mild Language

As Scott established in his review, Super Mario Bros. 2 was just a placeholder until the true sequel, Super Mario Bros. 3, was ready. What I find ironic is that Nintendo has re-used the same game for the exact same reason. The highly-anticipated port of Super Mario World, would not have been finished in time for launch (as of this writing, it is only a few months away) so Super Mario Bros. 2 was the substitute. Unfortunately, by taking such a shortcut, Nintendo has wound up with the same result. When it was all said and done, Super Mario Advance left me wanting a true Super Mario game.

The best reason to own the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color were Nintendos exclusive titles. For the last decade, Nintendo has been the only publisher consistently releasing not only good games for the handheld, but delivering great exclusive titles like Tetris, The Legend Of Zelda: Links Awakening, and the many shades of Pokémon.

Looking at the differences between where videogames have been and where theyre going, youll often find some groups of people saying that they miss the good old days. "Old-school" gaming, as it were. For those of us with enough years under our belts to have been active players on more than one generation of consoles, its a mysterious and sometimes indefinable quality that some claim has disappeared from games crafted today, much to the loss of game players everywhere.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Violence