Sorry. About your eyes, that is. Next month's cover won't be quite so, er, vibrant, I promise. I know that for a fact, because we've done it already. In fact, we did it for this month, then the game didn't turn up at the last minute and we couldn't use it and we had to do a new one in about 20 minutes flat. Software houses, we really do love 'em.

It's been like that all month on this issue - games suddenly missing their deadlines mere moments before we were supposed to be reviewing them, games getting put back until November left, right and centre, and games which simply didn't exist in any meaningful sense at all except in the minds of fiendish PR men. The end result, you'll probably have noticed, is not an awful lot of software happening this month. In fact, it's the worst month I've ever known since I started on AP a brain-melting 30 months ago. 'Summer slump' just doesn't begin to cover it.

But don't panic - it's not all doom and gloom, for this is also the month that Commodore have chosen to officially announce the machine that we told you about exclusively two months ago - the CD32. This Mega CD-beating console will be hitting the streets in the autumn, and at £299 for what's basically a full-spec A1200 with a CD-ROM drive bolted on to it, we're expecting a big success. And some games.

Even the bog-standard old Amiga should have a better time in the coming months, though - we've got a veritable flood of software on the way for the next couple of issues, including, hopefully, Overdrive, Stardust, Blastar and F117A Stealth Fighter, as well as lots more. The other good news is that we get to up the size of the magazine from next month to cope with it all, as we approach the traditionally meaty autumn/Christmas schedules. Stand by for more of our scary six-page features on whatever takes our fancy one quiet afternoon, and lots of the other stuff that we just don't have the room to do in the summer, possibly including a giant special on all the great 'In The Style Of...' pictures that you've been sending in in your dozens. Or possibly not.

As I type we're right in the middle of deadline week, and everything's continuing to collapse around my ears like it's been doing all month, so I'm going to go now and rearrange the flatplan. Again. Normal poor-quality-joke service will be resumed next month, probably.

Stuart Campbell