Polybius is a fictitious 1981 arcade game that is part of an urban legend. The legend describes

Polybius is a fictitious 1981 arcade game that is part of an urban legend. The legend describes the game as part of a government-run crowdsourced psychology experiment based in Portland, Oregon. Gameplay supposedly produced intense psychoactive and addictive effects in the player. These few publicly staged arcade machines were said to have been visited periodically by men in black for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Allegedly, all of these Polybius arcade machines disappeared from the arcade market.Show more

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

LEGEND
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. The game was popular to the point of addiction, 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 effects. Players supposedly suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including seizures, amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, and hallucinations. 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". 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, Sinnlöschen would be more correct.

The game has the same name as 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.

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 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 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 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...

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(urban_legend)

TAGS: Polybius (urban legend), Urban legends, Science and technology-related conspiracy theories, Fictional video games, Creepypasta, Arcade video games

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