Pre-order incentives these days are mostly garbage. Pre-order at one retailer, you get some useless piece of DLC. Pre-order at this other retailer, you get a different and equally useless piece of DLC. Oftentimes the bonus is an early multiplayer advantage or a “special edition” upgrade that throws more DLC at you. Or maybe just an early pass to a beta test or demo release. Lame.
I remember when reserving games ahead of time use to come with the reward of a physical item to collect or that had an actual function, like a soundtrack CD or an art book or a t-shirt or a themed stylus. But that’s rare nowadays. Just another casualty of the digital age.
Square Enix is, however, one publisher that continues to value the collectible pre-order bonus, particularly with its handheld offerings. Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, the forthcoming Nintendo 3DS rhythm game celebration of Final Fantasy‘s timeless music catalog, is such a game.
In North America, customers who pre-order Theatrhythm will receive a gripped stylus pen and a sheet of 17 stickers featuring the faces of iconic Final Fantasy characters all cutsyfied in an adorable, almost doll-like style, as they’re depicted in the game. The stylus is designed to highlight these stickers too, the circular back end the perfect frame to show off the sticker of your favorite character. Character stickers include: the Warrior of Light, Firion, Onion Knight, Cecil, Bartz, Terra, Cloud, Squall, Zidane, Tidus, Shantotto, Vaan, Lightning, Moogle, Chocobo, Cosmos and Chaos.
The only thing Square Enix hasn’t made clear is which retailers are offering this pre-order perk. I see it on Amazon.com but not at other usual suspects like Best Buy, GameStop or Walmart.
Matt Litten is the full-time editor and owner of VGBlogger.com. He is responsible for maintaining the day to day operation of the site, editing all staff content before it is published, and contributing regular news, reviews, previews and other articles.
Matt landed his first gig in the video game review business writing for the now-defunct website BonusStage.com. After the sad and untimely close of BonusStage, the former staff went on to found VGBlogger.com. After a short stint as US Site Manager for AceGamez, Matt assumed full ownership over VGBlogger, and to this day he is dedicated to making it one of the top video game blogs in all the blogosphere.
Matt is a fair-minded reviewer and lover of games of all platforms and types, big or small, hyped or niche, big-budget or indie. But that doesn't mean he will let poor games slide without a good thrashing when necessary! 
