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Polybius (urban legend)

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An alleged start screen, attached to an article on coinop.org[1]

Polybius is an urban legend about a lost video game. According to the legend, a new game appeared in arcades around Portland, Oregon, in 1981. The gameplay was supposedly psychoactive, abstract, and dangerous. Children who played the arcade game were said to suffer from amnesia, seizures, night terrors, and hallucinations. Despite these adverse effects, the arcade cabinet was described as so addictive that players returned to Polybius repeatedly until they went insane, died, or vanished. The lack of any surviving Polybius cabinets is explained by men in black who were said to record data on the players before removing all the arcade machines.[2]

There is no evidence that Polybius ever existed. The earliest known print reference to the game is the September 2003 issue of GamePro. The earliest online reference to Polybius is the coinop.org entry, dated to 1998. There is no evidence that the supposed publisher, Sinneslöschen, existed. Snopes has called it a modern-day version of the early '80s urban legends about "men in black" recording the high-score initials saved in arcade machines.

This urban legend has persisted in video game journalism and has inspired video games with the same name.

Background

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A E-FOIA request for Polybius returned no results.

There is no evidence that the game ever existed.[2] The first online mention of Polybius is a coinop.org article dated 1998. It includes a purported screenshot of the title screen allegedly from a ROM image file created from one of the original arcade machines. On May 16, 2009, an update to the page promised to bring further information after a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, to investigate. As of 2025, no further information has been added to the page.[1][3] Researchers have found evidence that the entry was first uploaded a few years after 1998, making even the upload date fictitious.[4][5]

The earliest known printed mention of Polybius is in the September 2003 issue of GamePro.[2] The feature story "Secrets and Lies" declared the game's existence to be "inconclusive".[6] The article spread the legend to a broader audience, but GamePro's writer only heard about the legend when the owner of coinop.org contacted him.[4] Interest was further kindled in 2006 when a post appeared on the coinop.org forums by an individual presenting himself as "Steven Roach" who claimed to have set up the publishing company Sinneslöschen.[7] Based on the timeline of publications, Inverse concluded that the game "was almost certainly invented" to promote coinop.org.[8]

There is no record of the game's purported publisher, Sinneslöschen. Author Brian Dunning describes the word as "not-quite-idiomatic German" meaning "sense delete" or "sensory deprivation". In German it would be pronounced [ˈzɪnəslœʃn̩]. It is derived from the German words Sinne ("senses") and löschen ("to extinguish" or "to delete"), though the way they are combined is unusual; Sinnlöschen would be a more standard German construction.[2]

Polybius has been described as "almost too good a name for a spooky video game."[8] It is named after the classical Greek historian Polybius, born in Arcadia and known for his assertion that historians should never report what they cannot verify through interviews with eyewitnesses.[3][9] He was also known for his work on puzzles and cryptography, such as the Polybius square.[8]

Legend

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A mock-up Polybius cabinet made by Rogue Synapse

According to the legend, a new video game appeared in suburban arcades around Portland, Oregon, in 1981.[10] Released during the golden age of arcade video games, it was housed in a simple black cabinet.[11][12] The game was abstract and geometric, but highly addictive.[13] People who claim to remember playing the game recall different and contradictory gameplay experiences.[14] Players supposedly suffered from seizures, amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, and hallucinations.[15] Addicted to the new game, children formed lines around the cabinet and fought each other for access to the machine.[2] They continued to play, becoming increasingly unwell, until after just a month all of the Polybius machines were taken away.[10]

It is claimed that the machines were visited by men in black, who collected some form of unknown data but left the coins inside.[2] It was said that the game could turn itself on autonomously.[16] Polybius was suspected to be not a product, but an experiment to test responses to the game's psychoactive stimuli.[1] As the legend comes to an end, some of the players went insane, some took their own lives, and after a month of experimentation, the game vanished without a trace.[4]

Reception

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The alleged original Polybius arcade game is generally considered a hoax.[2] Fact-checking website Snopes.com calls the game a modern-day version of 1980s rumors about "men in black" recording the high-score initials from arcade machines.[17] No newspapers or gaming magazines from the 1980s mention Polybius.[18] Aside from the mockup cabinets and games inspired by the myth, no authentic cabinets or ROM dumps have ever been documented.[3]

Internet writer Patrick Kellogg believes that players claiming to remember having played or seen Polybius may be recalling the video game Cube Quest. It was released in arcades in 1983 as a shooting game played from laserdisc. Kellogg describes its visuals as "revolutionary" and far ahead of typical games of the time. He states that frequent breakdowns are typical of laserdisc games, so this one was often removed from arcades.[19] University of Arizona professor Judd Ruggill has also proposed Tempest as an influence.[20] Tempest is an abstract and geometric game that requires intense focus and was inspired by the nightmares of its creator.[16]

While some people have claimed to remember earlier mentions on Usenet, no archived Usenet posts discuss Polybius. However, the Publius Enigma, an unsolved puzzle connected to Pink Floyd's 1994 album The Division Bell, was discussed on Usenet in the early '90s. These early recollections of the game may be false memories, recalling instead the similarly named Publius Enigma.[8][21]

Ben Silverman of Yahoo! Games remarked, "Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the game ever existed, no less turned its users into babbling lunatics ... Still, Polybius has enjoyed cult-like status as a throwback to a more technologically paranoid era."[15] Ripley's Believe It or Not! called Polybius "the most dangerous video game to never exist".[22] Portland historian Joe Streckert says of the game, "What H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon is for books, Polybius is for videogames."[10] Portland Monthly calls it "one of Portland's craziest urban legends", comparing it to the CIA's MKUltra mind control program of the 1950s-1970s.[23]

Themes

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arcade machine displaying "Winners don't use drugs. William S. Sessions, Director, FBI
Winners Don't Use Drugs arcade campaign

The story of Polybius may be rooted in several real but unrelated events. [4] Author Brian Dunning believes the Polybius legend grew out of a mixture of 1980s influences.[2] For example, two players fell ill in a Portland arcade on the same day in 1981.[2] Teenage Portland resident Michael Lopez developed a migraine headache after playing Tempest and left the arcade. He was found unconscious on a stranger's lawn after blacking out.[4] During a filmed attempt to break the Asteroids world record at the same arcade where Lopez became ill, another Portland teen played for 28 hours until suffering from stomach cramps.[24] Ten days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided several Portland arcades in the area. The lead-up to the raid involved FBI agents monitoring arcade cabinets for evidence of tampering and recording high scores.[2] The FBI made 52 Portland arcade arrests in 1981, and 25 arrests at a single arcade a year later.[25] Some arcade machines had been converted to gambling machines by arcade owners.[7]

The presence of men in black or government agents prowling arcades has precursors beyond Oregon.[2] Arcades were broadly seen both as targeting children and as sites of vice, such as gambling, smoking, theft, and drug use.[26] Government agencies targeted video game arcades with anti-gambling and anti-drug programs.[27] Major arcade developer Bally Manufacturing was repeatedly investigated for connections to illegal gambling.[26] In 1983, one Massachusetts town banned all arcade video games due to fears of arcades run by criminals with the police chief stating, "I don’t want my children supervised by those kind of people."[27] To catch drug sales occurring in arcades, the FBI rigged classic arcade games such as Tempest and Galaxian with surveillance equipment.[8] During the 1990s, before the spread of the Polybius story, the FBI launched its "Winners Don't Use Drugs" campaign, which flashed full-screen public service announcements from the FBI on arcade machines when no person was playing the game.[28]

Atari's testing procedures for new games may have also contributed to men in black rumors. Atari, then a major arcade game developer, would covertly place small numbers of incomplete new video games into public arcades. Atari's employees swapped in test versions of these unfinished games and observed players' responses in the arcades. To prevent their competitors from rushing copycat games to market, Atari did not disclose the true nature of these field tests to any arcade patrons.[29]

Many adults in the 1980s expressed concern about the new video games children spent so much time on.[8] Early video games were the subject of fears and anxieties about their possible dangers. A 1980 New York Times article commented on their potential for addiction, and the National Safety Council claimed that video games promoted violence.[27] There are nine recorded cases of arcade games triggering epileptic seizures in the 1980s.[2] In 1982, a teenager died while playing Berzerk in Calumet City, Illinois. His heart failure was not triggered by the game but led to rumors of a cursed arcade game.[30][31]

Although contemporary magazines and newspapers do not mention Polybius,[18] similar legends and rumors circulated in the late '70s and early '80s. Trust was declining in government institutions, and rumors spread of arcade machines designed to hypnotize, brainwash, or recruit players. The unusual machines and the affected players were then said to disappear. These rumors influenced science fiction such as the film The Last Starfighter, in which a teenage gamer is monitored and recruited by aliens.[29][2] The novel Arcade by Brian Maxxe was less popular than Starfighter but featured a fictional game very similar to Polybius. Arcade had a more sinister plot that Starfighter, based around government mind control experiments done on children in arcades.[4][32]

Legacy

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Video games

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In 2007, freeware developers and arcade constructors Rogue Synapse published a free downloadable game titled Polybius for Windows at sinnesloschen.com. Its design is partly based on a contested description of the Polybius arcade machine posted on a forum by an individual named Steven Roach who claimed to have worked on the original.[33] To complete the illusion, Rogue Synapse's owner Dr. Estil Vance founded a Texas-based corporation bearing the name Sinnesloschen (without umlaut) in 2007.[34] He transferred to it the "Rogue Synapse" trademark[35] and a newly registered trademark on "Polybius".[36] Its website says that it is an "attempt to recreate the Polybius game as it might have existed in 1981".[37]

In 2016, Llamasoft announced Polybius for the PlayStation 4 with PlayStation VR support,[38] released on the PlayStation store on Tuesday, May 9, 2017.[39] In early marketing, its co-author Jeff Minter claimed to have been permitted to play the original Polybius arcade machine in a warehouse in Basingstoke, England.[40] He later acknowledged that his game was inspired by the urban legend but does not attempt to reproduce its alleged gameplay.[41]

Other media

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It has a central cameo as the "main attraction" in the Nine Inch Nails music video "Less Than".[42]

Polybius has cameos in many TV series, such as The Goldbergs (2013), The Simpsons (2006), Dimension 404 (2017), and Smiling Friends (2020). The Loki (2021) cameo gained its own acclaim on social media, including that the game seems catastrophically integral to the multiverse, and is a key example of Loki interplaying conspiracy with reality.[3] For Paper Girls (2022), CBR reported that the Polybius cameo conferred the series with 1980s science fiction credentials, and differentiated it from Stranger Things (2016).[43]

The Polybius Conspiracy is a seven-part podcast published in 2017, adapted from a canceled feature film project.[23][44]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c "Polybius". coinop.org. May 16, 2019. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Dunning, Brian (May 14, 2013). "Skeptoid #362: Polybius: Video Game of Death". Skeptoid. Archived from the original on September 7, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2014.
  3. ^ a b c d Bankhurst, Adam (July 9, 2021). "Loki: The Strange Gaming Myth Behind That Polybius Machine in Episode 5". IGN. Retrieved January 2, 2023.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Dunning, Brian (June 5, 2018). Conspiracies Declassified: The Skeptoid Guide to the Truth Behind the Theories. Simon and Schuster. "Polybius". ISBN 978-1-5072-0700-0.
  5. ^ Archives of the entry from 2000 do not contain the 1998 date, but do contain the text:
    "Last Modification of this game: 2/6/2000 10:23:41 AM
    Reason for modification: New addition - anyone heard of this game?"
  6. ^ Elektro, Dan. "Secrets & Lies". GamePro. GamePro.com. p. 41. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
  7. ^ a b Hart, Michael (2022). Secrets of Video Game Consoles. White Owl. p. 233. ISBN 978-1-3990-7092-8.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Houlihan, Ryan (October 31, 2020). "'Polybius' is Real". Inverse.
  9. ^ Farrington, Scott Thomas (February 2015). "A Likely Story: Rhetoric and the Determination of Truth in Polybius' Histories". Histos. 9 (29–66): 40. doi:10.29173/histos284. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 22, 2020. Retrieved August 23, 2023. Polybius begins his history proper with the 140th Olympiad because accounts of the remote past amount to hearsay and do not allow for safe judgements (διαλήψεις) and assertions (ἀποφάσεις) regarding the course of events.... he can relate events he saw himself, or he can use the testimony of eyewitnesses. ([footnote 34:] Pol. 4.2.2: ἐξ οὗ συµβαίνει τοῖς µὲν αὐτοὺς ἡµᾶς παραγεγονέναι, τὰ δὲ παρὰ τῶν ἑωρακότων ἀκηκοέναι.)
  10. ^ a b c John, Finn J.D. (January 29, 2017). "Story of Sinister Videogame Almost Certainly a Myth". Offbeat Oregon History. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
  11. ^ Jovejoy, Bess (September 10, 2023). "Unraveling the Legend of Polybius, the Most Dangerous Video Game of the 1980s". Mental Floss.
  12. ^ Ambrose, Kristy (May 3, 2022). "6 Arcade Games That Have Amazing Lore". Game Rant.
  13. ^ Voll, C.S. (June 5, 2022). "Polybius: The Deadliest Arcade Game Ever Imagined". SUPERJUMP.
  14. ^ Patterson, Louis (July 3, 2024). "The Haunting Of 'Polybius,' An '80s Arcade Urban Legend". Ranker.
  15. ^ a b Silverman, Ben (January 25, 2008). "Video Game Myths: Fact or Fiction?". Yahoo! Video Games. p. 2. Archived from the original on January 29, 2008.
  16. ^ a b Ruggill, Judd Ethan; Mcallister, Ken S. (2015a). "Reading Tempest". Tempest: Geometries of Play. University of Michigan Press. pp. 11–33.
  17. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara; Mikkelson, David P. (November 29, 2007). "Hoax Round-Up". Snopes.com [Urban Legends Reference Pages]. Archived from the original on June 30, 2012.
  18. ^ a b Good, Owen S. (June 17, 2017). "Was Polybius real?". Polygon. Archived from the original on November 17, 2017. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  19. ^ Kellogg, Patrick. "Polybius by Patrick Kellogg". Archived from the original on August 21, 2018. Retrieved August 21, 2018.
  20. ^ Ruggill, Judd Ethan; Mcallister, Ken S. (2015b). "Contexts". Tempest: Geometries of Play. University of Michigan Press. pp. 48–74.
  21. ^ Strauss, Neil (February 16, 1995). "The Pop Life". The New York Times. Retrieved August 22, 2008.
  22. ^ Whelan, James (October 5, 2022). "Polybius: The Most Dangerous Video Game to Never Exist". Ripley's Believe It or Not!. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
  23. ^ a b Van Buren, Eleanor (November 8, 2017). "Polybius: The Most Dangerous Arcade Game in the World". Portland Monthly. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
  24. ^ "Tummy Derails Asteroids Champ". The Register-Guard. November 29, 1981. Archived from the original on February 6, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2014 – via Google News Archive.
  25. ^ Streckert, Joe (2020). Storied & Scandalous Portland, Oregon: A History of Gambling, Vice, Wits, and Wagers. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 171. ISBN 978-1-4930-4603-4.
  26. ^ a b Wade, Alex (2016). Playback – A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. pp. 91–97. ISBN 978-1-62892-486-2.
  27. ^ a b c {Kocurek, Carly A. (2015). Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the video Game Arcade. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 61–62, 94. ISBN 9781452953618.
  28. ^ Hutchinson, Sean (August 19, 2015). "How the F.B.I. Made 'Winners Don't Use Drugs' the Arcade Motto of the '90s". Inverse.
  29. ^ a b Rubens, Alex (September 10, 2019). 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command. Abrams. ch. 10. ISBN 978-1-4683-1645-2.
  30. ^ Kerch, Steve (April 27, 1982). "Hear is Blamed in Death of Video Game Patron, 18". Chicago Tribune. p. 3.
  31. ^ Simmons, Nathan (August 23, 2019). "Creepy Video Game Urban Legends That'll Give You Nightmares". Grunge.
  32. ^ Maxxe, Robert (1984). Arcade. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-18941-5.
  33. ^ "Serious Game Classification : Polybius (1981)". Archived from the original on September 13, 2017. Retrieved May 14, 2017.
  34. ^ "Taxable Entity Search". Comptroller.Texas.Gov. Archived from the original on May 3, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  35. ^ "Rogue Synapse Trademark of Vance, Estil – Registration Number 3052170 – Serial Number 76564186". Justia Trademarks. Archived from the original on August 9, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  36. ^ "Search Trademark Database". United States Patent and Trademark Office. Archived from the original on March 12, 2019. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  37. ^ "What is Your Pleasure Sir". Sinnesloschen. Archived from the original on May 20, 2017. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  38. ^ Machkovech, Sam (October 8, 2016). "A Video Game Called Polybius is Actually Coming Out. Will it Kill You?". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on July 13, 2017. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
  39. ^ "Polybius on PS4". Official PlayStation Store US. May 9, 2017. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved May 10, 2017.
  40. ^ Minter, Jeff (October 7, 2016). "Sample the Ludic Psychedelia of Polybius". PlayStation.Blog.Europe. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  41. ^ "Polybius: Early Days". The Grunting Ox. Llamasoft. Archived from the original on August 6, 2017. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  42. ^ Seppala, Timothy J. (July 13, 2017). "Nine Inch Nails' Latest Video Taps Into Gaming Legend". Engadget. Archived from the original on July 28, 2017. Retrieved July 14, 2017.
  43. ^ Meszaros, E. L. (July 31, 2022). "How Paper Girls Establishes Its '80s Sci-Fi Cred With an Urban Legend". CBR. Archived from the original on August 10, 2022. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
  44. ^ Brogan, Jacob (November 10, 2017). "The Polybius Conspiracy's Story of an Arcade Urban Legend Is Twisty Fun. It's Also Fake". Slate. Archived from the original on August 24, 2023. Retrieved August 24, 2023.
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