Maybe 'pristine' as I said was a bit optimistic. I suppose the main thing is that everything is clear and legible and scanned at a decent resolution. Some of the scans I've seen look like they've been dropped in a muddy puddle and left to rot for several months. The text is still clear enough to read, but it's not a fun experience, as it should be.
I noticed Stuart Campbell attempted to compile a complete AP set a couple of years back and uploaded the result in CBR format. He didn't entirely succeed, but it's another avenue to explore. Anyone interested can check out his '
Wings Over Sealand' blog.
Yes, the difference in quality across the range of old games mags is like night and day. Some were little more than comic book depth PR exercises where you couldn't trust the honesty of the reviews and then at the other end of the scale you had AP. Some of the Spectrum mags were fantastic as you say. Even some of the ones that weren't necessarily trustworthy were at least entertaining.
Where concept reviews are concerned I'm of the view that 'anything goes' is fine as long as you also cover the salient points re: the game for anyone who actually wants to know if it's any good or not. What's clever and most challenging is if you can spin-off into something bizarre/funny and still somehow make it relevant to the game in question. Anyone can say "I don't care about F1 racing, let's write about dolphins instead". That's not a specific example I should add, and any resemblance to the living or dead is purely coincidental.
If an article was never intended to inform readers of the merits of a particular game then I don't care about any connection to the Amiga. As long as it's interesting, that's all that counts for me.