Like the Evil Stick, Polybius blurs the line between an internet story and an actual physical object.
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| The legendary Polybius arcade cabinet. Source: Wikipedia |
The gameplay was supposedly psychoactive, abstract, geometric, and dangerous because it was highly addictive.[18] People who claim to remember playing the game recall different and contradictory gameplay experiences.[19]
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.
It is claimed that the machines were visited by men in black, who collected some form of unknown data but left the coins inside.[8][22]
It was said that the game could turn itself on autonomously.[23] Polybius was suspected to be not a product but an experiment to test responses to the game's psychoactive stimuli.[24][1] Some accounts connected Polybius to the CIA's real-world mind control program, MKUltra.[25]
At the legend's end, some of the players went insane, some took their own lives, and the arcade machines vanished without a trace.[8]
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.
There is no evidence that the game ever existed.[2] It is considered to be an urban legend or a deliberate hoax.[3][4] 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.[5] No newspapers or gaming magazines from the 1980s mention Polybius,[2] and no ROM image of the arcade machine's software has ever surfaced.[6] Aside from mockup cabinets and games inspired by the myth, no Polybius cabinets have ever been found.[7]
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| An alleged start screen, attached to an article on coinop.org[1] |
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".[11] 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.[8] Interest was further kindled in 2006 when a post appeared on the coinop.org forums by an individual presenting himself as "Steven Roach" and claiming to have founded Sinneslöschen.[12] Based on the timeline of publications, the gaming magazine Inverse concluded that the game "was almost certainly invented" to promote coinop.org.[9]
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| A redditor claims that their local arcade has the game Polybius |
Despite this, people online insist that this arcade game was real, and still exists, although it's debated on whether the new arcade cabinets popping off are just knock-offs or not. One redditor commented that the new Polybius games popping up are just recreations, especially considering how they have brand new , flat LCD screens when only rounded CRT screens were available back in the 1980's during the games alleged creation.
Polybius shares its name with the classical Greek historian Polybius, who was born in Arcadia.[14] He was known for his assertion that historians should never report what they cannot verify through interviews with eyewitnesses.[7][15] He was also known for his work on puzzles and cryptography, such as the Polybius square.[9]
The urban legend has had a lasting cultural impact. It has persisted in video game journalism and appeared in music, television, film, and performance art. Two video games titled Polybius were released in 2007 and 2017, claiming a connection to the purported arcade game. In fiction, the game and legend have been used to evoke 1980s nostalgia, supernatural themes, and conspiracy theories.