The problem with being a computer games magazine is that you are entirely at the mercy of the publishers of computer games.
As the mightiest computer games magazine ever conceived by human beings, with an inviolable policy of reviewing only finished games, you can horribly easily get in terrible trouble.
What happens is this: at the beginning of the issue, you have a fair idea of what games are due to be completed that month. You call up the companies involved and a lot say, yes, they will indeed be finished, they'll be available for review, what with you being the well-admired, scrupulously truthful, utterly trustworthy mightiest computer games magazine ever conceived by human beings, and they'll be finished long enough before the mag deadline for a thorough review to be written.
Phew.
You then compose a flatplan, allocating space to games as you see fit.
(For example, a much-anticipated release from a consistently-exciting company - a game, in other words, you'd reasonably expect to be rather good - would be pencilled in for more pages than a cash-in rip-off platform game.)
You then wait until two days before the deadline, when the game either finally turns up or the wily PR bod admits it's not going to do so at all.
Of course, you've been expecting this, as it's happened before with, well, every single game ever in the history of the mag, so you've carefully prepared some contingency reviews.
Let's hope they've turned up, eh?
How the mightiest computer games magazine ever conceived by human beings comes about, therefore, is in this manner.
The regular pages - Back Issues, say, and The Bottom Line and Do the Write Thing - are written and designed in the first few days.
(This, incidentally, is why the letters pages always discussed the issue before last - publishing schedules meant that we'd be writing the pages before the newer issue went on sale. We tried moving Do to the end of the issue, but that just meant even more nothing happening.)
You prepare some features. While these are being written, nothing happens.
A few games may turn up. There is a burst of activity as the completed features are handed over to the artists, then more nothing happens.
A lot of nothing happens, and then everything arrives in the last two days.
Everyone works until midnight and becomes extremely cross, but is secure in the knowledge this can't possibly happen next month, because the Ed's rung the games companies and they've reported their games will be finished and reviewable ages before the deadline.
You see? We were right. As always.