Welcome to the first entry of PadSmashing, a feature on SmashPad that features our staff heading to release parties and gaming conferences across the United States for one thing and one thing only–getting down with the get down.

Our first event?  The Final Fantasy XIII Release Party at the Regency Center in San Francisco!

Just a little while ago, the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII arrived in western shores.  Developed and published by the RPG masters at Square Enix, the game is by far the most highly anticipated game in the company’s history.  So big in fact, a launch party was held in the beautiful Regency Center located in San Francisco, California.  Gamer 2.0’s SmashPad was given a VIP invitation, so you can bet we took it in stride.

Being SmashPad’s Bay Area local, I was pretty much the ideal candidate.  I’m not the biggest Final Fantasy fan, but I’ve played through all the games and know who’s who in the industry.  Upon arriving, receptionists offered freebees such as the tattoos for the “enemy of cocoon.”

From there, we (by we, I mean me and the media team) waited on the red carpet for the arrivals of key contributors to the Final Fantasy’s success, including the Final Fantasy XIII Director Motomu Toriyama, the game’s battle director Yuji Abe, the voice actors for Lightning (Ali Hillis) and Snow (Troy Baker), and even the head honcho himself–Square Enix President and CEO, John Yamamoto.

Upon their arrival, we were able to get a few words out of each–granted, it was harder to actually get bites out of Toriyama, Abe, and Yamamoto since English isn’t their first language.  We chose not to go into in-depth interviews because 1 — we didn’t have the resources and 2 — this is a party.  These people aren’t going to tell any publication, big or small, anything that isn’t already known by most gamers.

So without serious conversation, what is there to do?  Simply enjoy things and mess around of course!  In fact, here’s a video of Snow (voiced by Troy Baker of Mass Effect fame) showing his awesomeness by contributing to Gamer 2.0:

When they actually let press onto the main floor, we were greeted by total awesomeness.  The front of the show floor included a stage and big presentation screen, while the sides featured playable FFXIII demos on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on opposite sides.  The back of the floor included all sorts of FFXIII collectible memorabilia, including a FFXIII energy drink called the “Elixir,” a bunch of action figures, and other merchandise.  However, the real reason to head to the back was for the open bar.  Yes.  Final Fantasy, booth babes, and free alcohol.  Three things that made this party worthwhile.  Don’t get me wrong, E3 and GDC are cool and all, but you don’t get to sip on a cranberry vodka while in line.

With the program officially beginning, guests were treated to an unreleased trailer that required the use of 3D glasses–which was rather awkward because by this time, the game was already released on the east coast, so why bother with another trailer?  But either way, it showed off the game’s impressive visuals on a large projection screen with 3D glasses, so it’s not like anything sucked.  Shortly after, Chris Hardwick from G4’s Web Soup was introduced as the host for the night as he jokingly stated that he missed out on the trailer, so we were forced to watch it again. (Oh how people love patting themselves on the back!) Shortly after that, the international trailer was shown, continuing to hype up the audience.

Speaking of hyping up the audience, a battle sequence of the game was shown featuring the game’s main duo, Lightning and Snow.  With the voices louder than usual, it was pretty obvious that it was being staged by the voice actors Ali Hillis and Troy Baker.  It was a rather hilarious sequence, and you can check it out in the video below:

With that, an involved panel of gaming spearheads were engaged in a discussion of Final Fantasy XIII and the series changing the landscape of gaming.  The panel included the likes of Chris Hardwick himself, as well as leading game developers in industry such as Cerny Games’ Mark Cerny, Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor, Microsoft’s Corrinne Yu, and Obsidian’s Feargus Urquhart.  In a nutshell, they pretty much talked about how great the series is and in rather curious fashion, outlined their shortcomings while having no choice but to praise Square Enix.

Granted, this lighthearted event wasn’t without its shots.  While industry powerhouses were giving lofty testimonials to Square Enix for the release of the game, Rob Dyer of Sony took a shot at Microsoft with quite a statement. “Gamers can experience Final Fantasy XIII on Blu-Ray the way it was meant to be played,” he triumphantly made blatant, “on one disc.”

Ouch.

The fact of the matter is this was a Square party, and it was their time to shine.  Being accompanied by Albert Penello of Microsoft, Entertainment Software Association President Mike Gallager, SCEA’s Rob Dyer, the production team made a toast to the game’s release.  I personally never thought I’d witness a toast between rival companies over the release of a semi-multiplatform video game, but considering Square’s power, I guess it wasn’t all that surprising.

After the toast of unnecessary proportions, the event was pretty much over.  DJ Mom Jeans was out playing a remixed version of Lightning’s Theme, and the show floor pretty much became a dance floor.  So while the likes of bigger publications tried to get already known information from Square Enix officials, the media team and I treated ourselves with as much free food, alcohol, and booth babes as possible.

All in all, it was quite the event.  It gave lucky Square Enix fans a chance to finally get their hands on the game, while also allowing everybody involved to bask in their own glory.  Again, I’m not the biggest Final Fantasy fan, but this was definitely quite an experience.  The fingerfoods and alcohol were just icing on the cake.  It also gave us a chance to network with writers of other publications, and it was just a fun night… even if it was pretty much the equivalent of a bad graduation party.

As for our main content, our review of the game will go up as soon as we finish it, which should be early next week.  For now, you can relive our experience by checking out our videos or the photo slideshow.  For more pictures, check out the public Facebook album.

Related posts:

1. One more day of Final Fantasy XIII hype!
2. Don’t You Disappoint Me, Final Fantasy XIII
3. UPDATE: New Final Fantasy XIII Screens & Videos Surface, Agito and Versus XIII as Well