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The grand final of the EuroCup Quake 3 clan tournament here in Holland is about to start, with top Scandinavian clans Ars Moriendi and Eyeballers facing off for the trophy. Full reports on all of the matches from yesterday are now available here on EuroGamer as part of our live coverage of the event!

Schroet Kommando and Ars Moriendi are battling it out at the moment in the finals of the winners bracket of the EuroCup Quake 3 clan tournament. The winner will go through to the grand final, the loser will have to play Eyeballers for another chance at the big prize. The games have been very close so far, with SK now 2 maps to 1 ahead in the best of five match... Look for a full report on this exciting match later tonight or early tomorrow. Watch this space!

Our report on the losers bracket final between Tulls and Eyeballers is now online here. Another closely fought match! Currently Schroet Kommando and Ars Moriendi are fighting it out in the finals of the winners bracket, with SK taking the first game by just 6 frags and the second map just starting. Stay tuned for a full report later!

Our coverage of the EuroCup Quake 3 clan tournament in the Netherlands has now kicked off, with some pre-tourney spiel about the competitors, venue and rules, as well as a full report on the first match, between Scandinavians Ars Moriendi and Italy's top clan, Tulls.

New today on EuroGamer is our review of Take 2's action adventure game, Martian Gothic : Unification. A kind of Resident Evil with brains set on Mars, Martian Gothic certainly looked promising when we previewed the game a few weeks ago. Now we have a final boxed copy of the game, can it live up to its promise? Read our review to find out!

Thanks to event organisers ClanBase and their partners GamePoint and the unfortunately named NOB Interactive for making it all possible!

August 6th, 1996 - NASA hold a press conference. An announcement is made that a meteorite discovered in Antarctica, originating from Mars, contains possible microfossil bacteria .. primitive life. A surveyor flight visits Mars in 2005. It returns with evidence that microorganisms may have existed a million years before. But nothing conclusive.

A wee little birdy tells us that LAN Arena, the venue that hosted the recent PC Gamer Championships Unreal Tournament competition in Nottingham, are about to expand. A number of new LAN Arena venues will be opening around the UK over the next few months - watch this space for more information!

German development house Blue Byte have sent us a whole barrage of press releases from E3 -

We've got a real treat for you today, in the form of an exclusive review of Evolva, the gorgeous looking third person squad action game from British developer Computer Artworks, which is due for release in the UK tomorrow.

Until recently, British company Computer Artworks was known for developing evolutionary art programs rather than games.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the biggest show of its kind in the world, giving companies that develop and sell electronic equipment and games the opportunity to show their wares off in public. Not only does the world's press attend the event, but with the advent of the Internet, the hundreds of thousands of gamers around the world can catch up on the action as it happens, and discover the ins and outs of a previously inaccessible media event. Currently the ConsoleGamer staff budget doesn't stretch to overseas airfares, so our editorial team has remained firmly grounded here in the UK. But naturally, our enthusiasm for such events prohibited us from just sitting on our haunches during this exciting time, so we've scraped together all the information we could on what will be on offer and have set it into various categories for your perusal. You can find out who's demo'ing what at the event and check out our mammoth collection of links to event coverage elsewhere. So, if you can't be at the event like us, enjoy it anyway, and check back regularly for updates!

I spotted over at VE that Avault have posted some information (straight from E3) on EA's upcoming Quake III engine powered action/adventure game, American McGee's Alice. They even got three brand new shots from this game which is slated for a Quarter 3 2000 release.

Today's preview here on EuroGamer is a little different from usual, as the game we are previewing has already been released in a "Gold Edition"... So why are we previewing it? Because thanks to the wonders of modern technology (and a handy util called Static), Aliens vs Predator is being given a new lease of life with vastly improved multiplayer support.

In throwing myself into Aliens vs Predator skirmish and single player, the online AvP fix I craved still eluded me .. until now.

Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software mentions in his latest .plan update that they will be showing Half-Life: Opposing Force CTF at E3. So if you're interested in taking a peek at (and maybe even play) the soon-to-be-released icial Gearbox Capture The Flag before anyone else on the planet then go to the Half-Life display at the Sierra / Havas booth.

I spotted on Blues that Chris Taylor and Sarah Boulian from Gas-Powered Games replied to a few posts on the Gamer's Lounge Forums regarding their upcoming RPG, Dungeon Siege. In the first post (second from top) Chris describes the magic system in Dungeon Siege which seems very cool and in the second post (fourth from top) Sarah responds to the inevitable question "When will the game be released?".

I saw on the Shack that Valve Sector have posted an article filled with in depth information about Valve Software's upcoming game, Team Fortress 2. This article contains information about some of the weapons in the game, armor and a bunch of other very interesting things, remember that all things mentioned in this article are subject to change during development of the product itself.

Griff from Challenge EU has posted a preview of the EuroCup Quake 3 clan tournament, the finals of which are taking place in Holland this weekend. I'll be there bringing you full coverage of the event for EuroGamer, so keep 'em peeled!

Southpeak sent word that Catherine Bach, the actress who played Daisy Duke in the cult (in other words, bad) 80's TV series "Dukes of Hazzard", will be at their stand at E3 tomorrow helping to promote their new game "Dukes of Hazzard : Racing For Home".

Yes, it's here - the eagerly awaited map pack for Unreal Tournament by Epic's French Connection, level designer Cedric "Inoxx" Fiorentino. Grab it from your favourite outlet -

First person shooters are arguably the most popular genre in gaming these days. But fans of portable gaming have been left behind when it comes to FPS in your pocket. Until now. After over 12 months hard labour, James McCombe has finally released Dreadling - the first ever FPS game for a handheld. But those of you with GameBoys will have to wait for T-Rex later in the year, and NGPC fans miss out all together, because Dreadling only runs on Palm. Yes, the pocket organiser. And it's really rather good. To find out more, read PocketGamer.net's review of the shareware code.

- Cryo

New today on EuroGamer is our review of Fireteam, the multiplayer isometric squad action game from French publisher Cryo. It might not be as graphically intense or as well known as Starsiege Tribes or Unreal Tournament, but is it still worth your francs? Read our review to find out more!

bleem! was released back in April of '99, after a storm of publicity. Sony filed a rumoured, multi-million pound lawsuit against them to stop the distribution of their Playstation emulator, despite the efforts of this huge multi-national, bleem! won - three times. bleem! was not the first Playstation emulator, in fact, several months prior to its release, PSemu pro had been made widely available across the Internet, unlike bleem!, this was freeware, but required the image of an original Playstation BIOS to run - as no surprise to anyone, these were widely available across many major emulation sites. The question of course begs, as to why Sony would actually want to prevent the release of this emulation software, bearing in mind they actually make no profit on console sales. The money comes rolling in for the Electronics giant when games are purchased. This doesn't change with the use of emulators; they too require Playstation discs. Perhaps Sony were worried about the piracy issue - the fact that bleem! natively runs pirated discs, where as the console has to be chipped, a complex procedure, which involves soldering a chip into the main board of the console, that bypasses the security routine. So, aside from the legalities, what does bleem! actually do for you? Essentially, it is a program that runs from within the Windows environment, that allows you to play Playstation games on your PC. Further to this, anything above a PII300, with a decent 3D card, actually runs the games a lot better in comparison with the console. Higher resolutions are achieved, 800x600 upwards are quite easily manageable on many computer systems, this, compared to the Playstations 512x240. Cutting the need for memory cards to save, bleem! can dump onto your hard drive, saving you about £15 for every couple of megs you would've occupied on those oh-so-overpriced, but necessary storage devices. Supporting all direct input controllers, you can use your joystick, wheel and pedals, flight yoke, plain old game-pad, or whatever you like to take control in any bleem! supported game. bleem! also advertise the fact that you can play your favourite Playstation games on the go, presumably with the voodoo3-equipped laptop you carry in your attaché case. So then, there must be some downsides, to this so far, wondrous piece of software. Well actually, now you come to mention it, yes there are. Probably the most major factor being compatibility, or rather the lack of it. Sure enough, bleem! does actually support most, if not all of the chart games. But, each and every game has to be added to the library, before it can run - and anyone who's been to their local Electronics Boutique of late, will have no doubt seen the Playstation section covering an entire wall, or two. The incompatibility comes about because bleem! is not an exact copy of the console, and leans to different routines and procedures, so of course, incompatibilities are inevitable. Not to knock the efforts of the developers, to date, bleem! does in fact support over 300 games. bleem! is not the only platform to have problems running Playstation games, you have to look no further than Sony's new beast, the Playstation 2, to find another that lacks support for its predecessors games, and, unlike bleem! there is not an awful lot that can be done to fix these problems. bleem! was the first emulator to have a reasonable success rate with the Playstation. It was perhaps a risk on their behalf to invest so much time in the development on this fine piece of software, not knowing whether they were going to get a return on it. As it turns out, they have in fact made a huge number of sales of the emulator and its attached merchandise, such as the rather fetching bleem! t-shirt. If you're still very much into playing your Playstation games, but crave prettier graphics, and higher resolutions, bleem! could be for you, download the demo at bleem.com, and give it a try.

John Cash, one of the programmers at id Software, has left the company to join Blizzard where he will be working on an as-yet unannounced project. For the full story, check Graeme Devine's .plan. This follows the recent departures of Brian Hook and Zoid, so if you are a games programmer now might be the time to brush up your CV!

GameIDE, the "Integrated Design Environment" for mod coders, reaches v2.5R2

The game itself is ripped straight out of the arcade, and it certainly recreates the feeling of playing a classic arcade style beat 'em up, fortunately without draining a constant stream of pound coins out of your wallet. In fact as soon as you load up the game, there is a distinct arcade look and feel to the menus which is both good and bad, but more on that later… Sadly I think Capcom have skimped a little with this title, and they have leant far more heavily on the Marvel side. As a result many of the 20 characters available in the game are the Marvel superheroes, and there are only a few of the classic Street Fighter's left. Old favourites like Ryu, Chun Li and M. Bison are in the game, but other than that it's a rather poor turnout for the Street Fighter crew. While this is a shame, it does make way for the more well known superheroes and quite a few which I had never heard of. Classic characters like SpiderMan, Venom, The Hulk, War Machine and Wolverine make up some of the more well known characters while Captain Commando, Jin and Morri make up some of the more unknown champions of peace. One thing that the game does bring to the mould is a tag team style of play. Instead of selecting just one character, you get to pick two. This brings with it some merits but it can make the game a little more tactical (and possibly more difficult) to play. While it can be a little confusing knowing who to pair with who in order to create an unstoppable duo, it is certainly a great deal of fun pairing some of the guys together. For example who would have thought of SpiderMan fighting with his arch nemesis Venom as his partner? Of course there is no limit (well almost no limit) to the combinations and putting the diminutive Mega Man with the dominating Hulk does tend to yield some interesting confrontations! Switching between the two characters is fairly easy, and can be done at any time during a fight. It's probably not too surprising to know that changing characters mid match can actually help you get the win, which is probably why the computer does it every now and again. Admittedly it does turn the game into a bit of a WWF fest, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. While there are 20 main characters to pick, there are a whole heap of other which take the form of 'support characters'. After you've picked your fighters the computer will randomly choose your 'celebrity' support. Once again these are drawn from another pool of superheroes, most of which are b-list Marvel stars. There are a few notable support characters like Cyclops and Iceman, and it is a shame that two such awesome fighters have been relegated to a support role. Oh well… The game has a few play options, ranging from the classic arcade style to the must have 'versus' mode, where you get to actually play against your mates - should you have any that want to play against you! One worthwhile inclusion is the training mode. This allows you to check out all of the players against any other computer controlled duo. There is no time limit to this and there is no real health restriction as after any damage is sustained the health bars of both the player and computer are restored to full. You can also change characters mid fight, which allows you to experiment with which characters do better against the others. On the graphical front I felt more than a little let down by Marvel Vs. Capcom. I said earlier that the menu's had a very arcade feel. Unfortunately they look rather dated and would certainly not look uncommon on a SNES cart. Also the whole game looks distinctly low res and certainly isn't pushing the DreamCast to its limits. It is a shame, as in the face of the new breed of 3d style beat 'em ups Marvel Vs. Capcom looks extremely old due to its graphics. While it is very colourful it is a little grainy and some of the textures could have done with a little more work. On the sound front you can expect a cacophony of arcade style audio. With some classic samples of the characters such as Ryu's 'hado-yu-ken' adding a nice touch to the game. The rest of the samples are also very good, and as always can add a much needed bit of comic relief - especially when a character explodes into one of their awesome special moves. Music wise you can expect to be drowned in a sea of electronic music that harks of classic Japanese arcade classics, and after a while the 'tunes' can get extremely annoying, but that is hardly a rare occurrence with console games.

This week's article here on EuroGamer is "Noddy's Guide To Graphics Card Jargon", which explains what some of the key buzzwords that the graphics card industry is using really mean.

The last couple of weeks has seen a frenzy of graphics card announcements and previews, with 3dfx, ATI and NVIDIA all claiming to have produced the best thing since sliced bread. To allay your confusion, EuroGamer has cut through the jargon and hype to help you pick out the contenders from the also-rans.