The progress bar hit 100%. The screen flickered, a deep, humming bass vibrating through his desk.
When the game launched, there was no intro cinematic. Instead, a command prompt appeared in a font that looked less like code and more like jagged obsidian: SCANNING BIO-SIGNATURE... WELCOME BACK, COMMANDER.
Tiny, 8-bit sprites began to march down his street. They were Tauran Invaders—purple-skinned and multi-limbed. In the game UI, a notification popped up: