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When we ranted about “special” editions of video games last month, we mentioned the Nuka Cola bottle opener that gamers can pick up by pre-ordering Fallout 3 at Best Buy. Our annoyance over this pre-order bonus is that it’s a Best Buy exclusive, which may be good for Best Buy, but positively annoying for those of us who already pre-ordered the game elsewhere. Having an incentive to order from a particular retailer when a game developer makes an exclusive deal to give away a special bonus is one thing, but having two different retailers with different exclusives for the same game is just not fair. Are mega-fans supposed to buy the same game twice just to satiate their fandom?

Let’s be honest here: the Amazon “Survival Edition” of Fallout 3 is way cooler than the Nuka Cola bottle opener, and for the ridiculous price associated with the Survival Edition, there’s no reason Bethesda couldn’t have throw in the bottle opener which probably runs them less than a dollar to manufacture. So here we are with choices to make, but fortunately, one choice is simple: order the Survival Edition from Amazon, then pre-order the game at Best Buy for five dollars. That five bucks buys you the bottle opener and a five-dollar-off coupon towards the upcoming Fallout 3 strategy guide, so if you pick up the latter, you’re not out any money at all. If you don’t plan on picking up the strategy guide, or if you’re cheap like us, just hold onto your Best Buy pre-order receipt, and bring it in after the game is released, and just tell Best Buy that you’d like to put the five-dollar credit towards another title instead. That way, Best Buy still gets their money, and you get free Fallout swag.

With the bottle opener in hand, one last question remains: who at Bethesda do we need to kill to get a bottle of Nuka Cola?

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