I set down the guitar controller and start walking back through the layers.

I'm sitting at the PAX booth of 24 Caret Games, taking my first spin behind the frets of Retro/Grade, which has one of those great premises that only a video game could really do justice to. As ace spaceship pilot Rick Rocket, I've done it again: I've saved the galaxy by defeating the horrific final boss. The credits begin to roll and it's only then that I realize that, somehow, as a byproduct of this victory, all of space and time has come to an end. I do the only thing I know how to do, I reverse the flow of time, intercepting the shots I once fired and sucking them back up into my ship.

This is where I, the player, take over. Unfortunately, as the level unprogresses, I miss unfiring too many of my shots and get hit by too many enemy bullets I dodged the first time. I get a game over screen, but I don't see the end credits I saw at the beginning/end, but rather the real "Game Over." Only, it's not literally Game Over, since my ship is equipped with a Retro/Rocket that lets me unreverse the flow of time and unmiss the shots I originally made so I can unmake them correctly.

I notice my right temple has begun to throb.