Polybius (urban legend)

There is no evidence that the game ever existed. It is considered to be an urban legend or a deliberate hoax. Fact-checking website Snopes calls the game a modern-day version of 1980s rumors about "men in black" recording the high-score initials from arcade machines. No newspapers or gaming magazines from the 1980s mention Polybius, Aside from mockup cabinets and games inspired by the myth, no Polybius cabinets have ever been found. Archives of the entry from 2000 do not contain the 1998 date, but do contain the text: The earliest known printed mention of Polybius is in the September 2003 issue of GamePro. The article spread the legend to a broader audience, but its author only heard about the legend when the owner of coinop.org contacted him. Polybius shares its name with the classical Greek historian Polybius, who was born in Arcadia. He was also known for his work on puzzles and cryptography, such as the Polybius square. ==Legend==

According to the legend, a new video game appeared in suburban arcades around Portland, Oregon, in 1981. it was housed in a simple black cabinet. The game was abstract and geometric but highly addictive. People who claim to remember playing the game recall different and contradictory gameplay experiences. Players supposedly suffered from seizures, amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, and hallucinations. Addicted to the new game, children formed lines around the cabinet and fought each other for access to the machine. They continued to play, becoming increasingly unwell, until after just a few weeks all of the Polybius machines were taken away. It was said that the game could turn itself on autonomously. Some accounts connected Polybius to the CIA's real-world mind control program, MKUltra. At the legend's end, some of the players went insane, some took their own lives, and the arcade machines vanished without a trace. ==Themes==

The story of Polybius may be rooted in several real but unrelated events. Ten days later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 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 for possible witnesses. Some arcade owners had illegally converted video game cabinets into gambling machines. Many adults in the 1980s expressed concern about the new video games children spent so much time on. There are nine recorded cases of arcade games triggering epileptic seizures in the 1980s. Although contemporary magazines and newspapers do not mention Polybius, 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 unfinished 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. ==Memories and influences==

Players claiming to remember playing or seeing Polybius in the 1980s may be recalling one of several unusual games from the period. Several games may have influenced the legend and have been proposed as the "real Polybius". For example, the arcade game Cube Quest was released in 1983. It used laserdisc technology to create "hallucinogenic" environments for players to fly through. The advanced laserdisc visuals resulted in frequent breakdowns and an early removal from arcades. Tempest is an abstract and geometric game that requires intense focus and was inspired by the nightmares of its creator. 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 1990s. These early recollections of the game may be false memories, recalling instead the similarly named Publius Enigma. ==Legacy==

Polybius has inspired and appeared in music, television, and films. It has cameos in many TV series, such as The Goldbergs (2013) and The Simpsons (2006). The cameo in Loki (2021) gained acclaim on social media as an example of Loki referencing real-world conspiracy theories, and sparked speculation that the game was integral to the show's fictional multiverse. For Paper Girls (2022), CBR reported that the Polybius cameo gave the series 1980s science fiction credentials and differentiated it from Stranger Things (2016). Artists Goto80 and Raquel Meyers also explored the theme in a series of performances in 2010. The Polybius Conspiracy is a seven-part podcast published in 2017, adapted from a canceled feature film project. Two major video games were inspired by Polybius and bear its name. Rogue Synapse's owner, Dr. Estil Vance, even founded a corporation bearing the name Sinnesloschen. They present it as an "attempt to recreate the Polybius game as it might have existed in 1981". Developer Jeff Minter initially claimed to have played the original Polybius arcade machine in Basingstoke, England, but later admitted that this claim was itself a contribution to the hoax. Minter's game does not attempt to reproduce Polybius' alleged gameplay, but it is instead closer to his work on Tempest successors Tempest 2000 and TxK. 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." Portland historian Joe Streckert says of the game, "What H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon is for books, Polybius is for videogames." Portland Monthly calls it "one of Portland's craziest urban legends" and mentions that people at the time speculated that it might be part of the CIA's MKUltra mind control program of the 1950s–1970s. ==See also==