Dear Future Gamer,

Excellent, informative e-zine, but o! the frustration of those damned release dates slipping all the time.

I slid along to the shops yesterday looking for Duke Nukem: Zero Hour for my N64. I'd carefully checked the release date in Future Gamer (and just about every other mag in the country) - April 2nd.

You're ahead of me, of course. No Duke. No sign of Duke until July, in fact. What the hell is going on? Do publishers just make these dates up for a laugh?

Graham Styles

FG: As we keep saying, Graham, the FG release schedule is only a rough guide. It's put together from the information we're sent by the games publishers each week and, as you've seen, radically changes more or less every time. The shops almost certainly get exactly the same lists.

It's frustrating for them and it's frustrating for us, but there's nothing we can do to get software houses to stick to what they say. There are many, many reasons why a game slips - at least 78 off the top of my head. In fact, enough to fill a FG feature, come to think of it. Stay tuned.