''Polybius'' is an
urban legend
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
concerning a fictitious 1981
arcade game
An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...
.
The legend describes the game as part of a government-run
crowdsourced
Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
psychology experiment based in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
. Gameplay supposedly produced intense
psychoactive
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance, that changes functions of the nervous system, and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior.
Th ...
and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by
men in black
In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are purported men dressed in black suits who claim to be quasi-government agents, who harass, threaten, or sometimes even assassinate unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesses t ...
for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Allegedly, all of these ''Polybius'' arcade machines disappeared from the arcade market.
This urban legend has persisted in video game journalism and through continued interest, and has inspired
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
with the same name.
Legend
![Polybius Arcade 1 cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Polybius_Arcade_1_cropped.jpg)
The urban legend says that in 1981, when new arcade games were uncommon, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
. The game was popular to the point of
addiction
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use o ...
,
with lines forming around the machines and often resulting in fights over who would play next. The machines were visited by men in black, who collected unknown data from the machines,
allegedly testing responses to the game's
psychoactive
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance, that changes functions of the nervous system, and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior.
Th ...
effects. Players supposedly suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including
seizures
An epileptic seizure, informally known as a seizure, is a period of symptoms due to abnormally excessive or neural oscillation, synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. Outward effects vary from uncontrolled shaking movements involving much o ...
,
amnesia
Amnesia is a deficit in memory caused by brain damage or disease,Gazzaniga, M., Ivry, R., & Mangun, G. (2009) Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. but it can also be caused temporarily by the use ...
,
insomnia
Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which people have trouble sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy, ...
,
night terrors
Night terror, also called sleep terror, is a sleep disorder causing feelings of panic or dread and typically occurring during the first hours of stage 3–4 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and lasting for 1 to 10 minutes. It can last long ...
, and
hallucination
A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combinatio ...
s.
Approximately one month after its supposed release in 1981, ''Polybius'' is said to have disappeared without a trace.
The company named in most accounts of the game is ''Sinneslöschen''.
The word is described by writer
Brian Dunning as "not-quite-idiomatic German" (a word constructed outside the norms of German-language usage and grammar) meaning "sense delete" or "sensory deprivation".
If it was a German term of actual use, "Sinneslöschen" would be pronounced like . The word's meanings are derived from the German words ''
Sinne'' ("senses") and ''
löschen'' ("to extinguish" or "to delete"), though the way they are combined is not standard German.
The game has the same name as the classical Greek historian
Polybius
Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail.
Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed ...
, born in
Arcadia
Arcadia may refer to:
Places Australia
* Arcadia, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
* Arcadia, Queensland
* Arcadia, Victoria
Greece
* Arcadia (region), a region in the central Peloponnese
* Arcadia (regional unit), a modern administrative un ...
and known for his assertion that historians should never report what they cannot verify through interviews with eyewitnesses.
Origins
Due to the viral and anecdotal nature of the legend, an exact origin is unclear. Some anecdotal accounts claim that the legend originated on
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
circa 1994, or earlier through offline word of mouth. The earliest confirmed record of the legend is an entry for the title added to arcade game resource coinop.org on February 6, 2000;
although coinop.org lists the page as originating in 1998, journalist Stuart Brown states that it appears to have defaulted to that time due to a database error caused by a lack of input.
The entry mentions the name ''Polybius'' and a copyright date of 1981.
The author of the entry claims in the description to be in possession of a
ROM image
A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, or used to contain a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequen ...
of the game, and to have extracted fragments of text from it, including "1981 Sinneslöschen".
The remainder of the information about the game is listed as "unknown",
and its "About the game" section describes the "bizarre rumors" that make up the legend.
Some time prior to September 2003, Kurt Koller, owner of coinop.org, submitted a message to the American video game magazine ''
GamePro
Gamepro.com is an international multiplatform video game magazine media company that covers the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software in countries such as Germany and France. The publication, GamePro, was originally la ...
'' about ''Polybius''.
''Polybius'' then appeared in the September 2003 issue of ''GamePro'', as part of a feature story on video games called "Secrets and Lies".
This is the first known printed mention of the game, exposing the legend to a mass-market audience.
The article declared the existence of the game to be "inconclusive",
helping to both spark curiosity and spread the story.
Following the appearance in ''GamePro'' magazine, several people claimed to have some involvement with ''Polybius''.
In 2006, a man named Steven Roach claimed he had been one of its original programmers and that his company developed a game with very intense and cutting-edge graphics. However, according to Roach, a boy experienced an epileptic seizure while playing, and the cabinets were withdrawn by the company in a panic. Although Roach offered no proof for his claims, his story added details on gameplay that later inspired Rogue Synapse's game based on the legend.
Analysis
![EFOIA Request](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/EFOIA_Request.png)
The alleged original ''Polybius'' arcade game does not exist.
Snopes.com, which catalogs urban legends, concludes the game is a modern-day version of 1980s rumors of "men in black". This led to the hypothesis that the government was hosting some sort of experiment and sending
subliminal message
Subliminal stimuli (; the prefix ' literally means "below" or "less than") are any sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception, in contrast to stimuli (above threshold). A 2012 review of functional magnetic resonance ...
s to the players. Magazines and mainstream news of the early 1980s make no mention of ''Polybius''. Aside from the mockup cabinets and games inspired by the myth, no authentic cabinets or ROM dumps have ever been documented.
Ben Silverman of
Yahoo! Games
Yahoo! Games was a section of the Yahoo! website, launched on March 31, 1998, in which Yahoo! users could play games either with other users or by themselves. The majority of Yahoo! Games was closed down on March 31, 2014 and the balance was clos ...
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."
Skeptics and researchers have differing ideas on how and why the story of ''Polybius'' originated. American producer and author Brian Dunning believes ''Polybius'' to be an
urban legend
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
that grew out of a mixture of influences in the 1980s.
He notes that two players fell ill in Portland on the same day in 1981, one collapsing with a
migraine
Migraine (, ) is a common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent headaches. Typically, the associated headache affects one side of the head, is pulsating in nature, may be moderate to severe in intensity, and could last from a few hou ...
headache after playing ''
Tempest
Tempest is a synonym for a storm.
'' The Tempest'' is a play by William Shakespeare.
Tempest or The Tempest may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Films
* ''The Tempest'' (1908 film), a British silent film
* ''The Tempest'' (1911 film), a ...
'',
and another suffering from stomach pain after playing ''
Asteroids
An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere.
...
'' for 28 hours in a filmed attempt to break a world record at the same arcade.
Dunning records that the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
raided several video arcades in the area just ten days later, where the owners were suspected of using the machines for gambling, and the lead-up to the raid involved FBI agents monitoring arcade cabinets for signs of tampering and recording high scores. Dunning suggests that these two events were combined in an urban legend about government-monitored arcade machines making players ill. He believes that such a myth must have been established by 1984, and that it influenced the plot of the film ''
The Last Starfighter
''The Last Starfighter'' is a 1984 American space opera film directed by Nick Castle. The film tells the story of Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a teenager recruited by an alien defense force to fight in an interstellar war. It also features Robert ...
'', in which a teenager is recruited by aliens who monitor him playing a covertly-developed arcade game. Dunning considers "Sinneslöschen" to be the kind of name that a non-German speaker would generate if they tried to create a compound word using an English-to-German dictionary.
Internet writer Patrick Kellogg believes that players claiming to remember having played or seen ''Polybius'' as early as the 1980s may actually be recalling the video game ''
Cube Quest
''Cube Quest'' is a shoot 'em up arcade laserdisc game by American company Simutrek released in 1983. It was primarily designed and programmed by Paul Allen Newell, who previously wrote some Atari 2600 games. It was introduced at Tokyo's Amusemen ...
''.
''Cube Quest'', released in arcades in 1983, is a shooting game which played from a
laserdisc
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as DiscoVision, MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978. Its diam ...
. Kellogg describes its visuals as "revolutionary" and far ahead of typical games of the time. He states that the game would be frequently visited for maintenance (because of frequent breakdowns of laserdisc players in arcade games) and was often removed from arcades after a short time for the same reason.
British filmmaker and video game journalist Stuart Brown concludes that the ''Polybius'' legend began no earlier than 2000, arguing against the purported 1980s origin for the myth.
In his review of the legend's history, Brown states his conclusion that the ''Polybius'' story began as an intentional hoax in 2000 by Kurt Koller, owner of coinop.org, in order to drive traffic to his site. Brown states that he did not find any evidence of the ''Polybius'' myth existing until the year 2000, the same year Brown concludes marked the first appearance of the ''Polybius'' article on Koller's site. In Brown's view, the frequently-cited 1980s origin of the myth was an invented aspect written into the coinop.org description of the "legend" to make Koller's hoax more convincing. Brown further theorizes that people recalling discussion of ''Polybius'' on Usenet in 1994 were misremembering articles on the
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic music, psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philo ...
-related
Publius Enigma
The Publius Enigma is an Internet phenomenon and an unsolved problem that began with cryptic messages posted by a user identifying only as "Publius" to the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup alt.music.pink-floyd through the Penet remailer, a now defu ...
puzzle. Per Brown, the ''Polybius'' hoax capitalized on the popularity of conspiracy theories and the highly viral nature of other Internet hoaxes in, or just before, the year 2000.
Brown also notes striking similarities between the fonts used on the supposed title screen, provided by the image on coinop.org in 2000, and those used for two
Williams Electronics
WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams ...
arcade video games
Arcade most often refers to:
* Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine
** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware
** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board
* Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games ...
: ''
Bubbles'' and ''
Robotron: 2084''.
He concludes that the 5-pixel text used for the credit counter is similar to that of ''Robotron: 2084'' and that the font that reads "Sinneslöschen" is almost identical to that of ''Bubbles'', with the only differences the appearance of the "O" and the mirror-image reversal of the "H" along a central vertical axis. Brown states that this could be the work of a copycat fan of Williams Electronics; both ''Bubbles'' and ''Robotron: 2084'' were made by Williams and both were released only a year later than when ''Polybius'' was said to first appear.
Legacy
''Polybius'' for Windows (2007)
In 2007,
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...
developers and arcade constructors Rogue Synapse registered the domain "sinnesloschen.com" and offered a free downloadable game titled ''Polybius'' for
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
. The game's design is partly based on a contested description of the ''Polybius'' arcade machine posted on a forum by an individual named Steven Roach who had claimed to have worked on the original. Rogue Synapse's ''Polybius'' is a 2D shooter resembling ''
Star Castle''.
To complete the illusion, Rogue Synapse's owner Dr. Estil Vance founded a Texas-based corporation bearing the name ''Sinnesloschen'' (without umlaut) in 2007.
He transferred to it the "Rogue Synapse" trademark
and a newly registered trademark on "Polybius".
Its website says that it is an "attempt to recreate the ''Polybius'' game as it might have existed in 1981".
''Polybius'' for PlayStation 4 (2017)
In 2016,
Llamasoft announced a game called ''Polybius'' for the
PlayStation 4
The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...
with support for the
PlayStation VR
The PlayStation VR (PS VR, known by its code name Project Morpheus during development) is a virtual reality headset developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, which was released in October 2016.
It is fully functional with the PlayStation 4 an ...
,
released on the PlayStation store on Tuesday, May 9, 2017.
In early marketing, co-author
Jeff Minter
Jeff Minter (born 22 April 1962) is an independent English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 19 ...
claimed to have been permitted to play the original ''Polybius'' arcade machine in a warehouse in
Basingstoke
Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...
, England.
He later acknowledged that the game was inspired by the urban legend but does not attempt to reproduce its alleged gameplay.
In popular culture
In the first episode of
''Paper Girls'' (2022), ''Polybius'' runs on a home game console.
In the fifth episode of season 1 of the
''Loki'' television series (2021), when Loki is in The Void, a ''Polybius'' cabinet is seen in the background of the Loki variants' hideout.
See also
*
List of urban legends
*
Toynbee tiles
The Toynbee tiles, also called Toynbee plaques, are messages of unknown origin found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American cities. Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have ...
References
External links
The game's entry on coinop.org* , includes alleged cabinet photograph
7 Greatest Video Game LegendsArticle about the game in ''Atlas Obscura''Eight minute documentary by the BBC
{{Italics title
Arcade video games
Creepypasta
Fictional video games
Science and technology-related conspiracy theories
Urban legends
Video game hoaxes