The National Media Museum was the scene of the Electronic Sports World Cup United Kingdom national finals for the best gamers in the two disciplines of Quake Live and FIFA10. Players from around the country travelled to face the best of the local talent in the hope of winning through to represent the nation at the Grand Finals to be held at Disneyland Paris from 30th June - 5th July.

Surrounded by a collection of "antique" eight bit arcade machines and coffee table asteroids machines (go odee!) and seated amongst a giant "tetris" game, a full bracket of thirty two players contested the FIFA10 event which was played over a best of three format and started just after lunchtime on Saturday. As you would possibly expect the local players were somewhat taken aback by the level of play on show from the big names in the UK FIFA scene and casualties were high in the first round which saw the top eight seeds make their way through to the second round of sixteen players.

Matches were played on Playstation 3's and lcd screens supplied by local gaming centre "UNIT 16" who also supplied a number of officials to oversee the event under the command of tournament manager Mark "uzi" Thompson. With games being on the "best of three format" there were quite a number of two nil victories bringing the first round to a close around four pm.

Stepping up to the plate at four were the last sixteen players and this is where we saw the competition start to get serious. Two local players Josh Duffy and Salman 911 had made it this far but were to fall at the hands of number one seed Robert Brewster (9-0 9-2) and Dignitas "Hugh Jarse 99" (6-1 4-3). first round winner Versace who knocked in twenty four goals in his opening tie was unable to keep up the pace and lost in straight sets to Dignitas Skammzz 2-3 and 4-7. Without doubt the match of the second round was the one between Royal Lewis and Mover Baby. After a first match win to Lewis of 2-1 Mover Baby came back with a 4-1 win in the second match setting up a nailbiting 6-5 deciding match win for Lewis to take the fixture two matches to one overall. Wins for AdamW, Dignitas Classic, Ben Andrews and chrissyB rounded off the event for day one.

Players turned out for the second day of matches which began at 1pm and the last eight player prepared to out skill their opponents.  The first two quarter finals were Brewster vs Hugh Jarse (2-1) and Lewis vs Classic (0-2) before the second two matches kicked off and showed off some serious skill as AdamW took the match vs Skammzz 2-0 and ChrissyB beat off Ben Andrews by the same result.


The semi finals threw Brewster and Classic together in the first match which saw the Dignitas man run out the 2-0 winner (5-4 4-3). The second semi delivered a total shut out as AdamW defeated ChrissyB 5-0 and 1-0 to storm into the final. Brewster and ChrissyB then contested the 3rd 4th playoff match with Brewster securing the "bronze" with a 2-1 match score. This also put him inline to pick up a copy of FIFA11 (on release of course!) courtesy of Electronic Arts who made a copy of the title available for the top three players in the event - our thanks go to E.A for their contribution.

This of course left AdamW and Dignitas Classic to decide the United Kingdom qualifier.and the first match was a stunner which eventually saw AdamW triumph 6-5. Sadly Classic was unable to reproduce the form of the previous three rounds and lost out 7-3 in the second match crowning AdamW as the Uk National Champion and winning the opportunity to represent the United Kingdom at the Grand Finals in  Paris.

The Quake Live event was played out on the Saturday in the gaming lounge at the National Media Museum and saw a limited field play a mini league "round robin" before the first and second placed players faced each other from behind a rocket launcher. No upset was on the cards however and pre event favourite Gareth "Garpy"  Marshall showed exactly why he is the man to contest the Grand Finals after winning his play off match 3-0 in a best of five (11-0, 12-4, 23-9) final.

The front facade of the NMM is comprised entirely of glass and a little screen glare was to found for the Quake Live players - no problem for Mr Garpy however after playing the entire tournament covering himself and the monitor in a black tablecloth "tent" - see image three in the gallery above. One little bit of trivia/coincidence - Both winners -  AdamW and Garpy share the same birthday.

The full results and brackets for the event can be found here. Thanks go out again to the National Media Museum, Destination Bradford, Conference Leeds and UNIT16. Not least thanks go out to the players who turned up and took part in both events which were played throughout with good sportsmanship and zero hassle. Thanks for it guys!