View source for Unsolved:Polybius (urban legend)

{{short description|Fictitious 1981 arcade game}}
[[File:Polybius, coinop.org.jpeg|thumb|An alleged start screen, attached to an article on coinop.org.<ref name="coinop.org"/>]]
'''''Polybius''''' is a fictitious 1981 [[Software:Arcade game|arcade game]] from an [[Social:Urban legend|urban legend]].<ref name=":12">{{Cite web|url=https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4362|title=Skeptoid #362: Polybius: Video Game of Death|first=Brian|last=Dunning|date=May 14, 2013|website=Skeptoid|access-date=October 13, 2014}}</ref> The legend describes the game as part of a government-run [[Social:Crowdsourcing|crowdsourced]] psychology experiment based in {{wipe|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 [[Social:Men in black|men in black]] for the purpose of data-mining the machines and analyzing these effects. Supposedly, all of these ''Polybius'' arcade machines then disappeared from the arcade market.

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

==Legend==
[[File:Polybius Arcade 1 cropped.jpg|thumb|upright|A mocked-up ''Polybius'' cabinet made by Rogue Synapse]]
The urban legend says that in 1981, when new arcade games were uncommon, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of {{wipe|Portland, Oregon}}. The game was popular to the point of [[Social:Behavioral addiction|addiction]],<ref name=":12" /> with lines forming around the machines and often resulting in fights over who would play next. The machines were visited by [[Social:Men in black|men in black]], who collected unknown data from the machines,<ref name=":12" /> allegedly testing responses to the game's psychoactive effects. Players supposedly suffered from a series of unpleasant side effects, including seizures, [[Medicine:Amnesia|amnesia]], [[Medicine:Insomnia|insomnia]], night terrors, and [[Unsolved:Hallucination|hallucination]]s.<ref name="silverman">{{cite web|url=http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/video-game-myths-fact-or-fiction-/1182040-2|title=Video Game Myths: Fact or Fiction? – Video Game Feature|last=Silverman|first=Ben|date=January 25, 2008|publisher=Yahoo! Video Games|page=2|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080129160752/http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/video-game-myths-fact-or-fiction-/1182040-2|archive-date=January 29, 2008|url-status=dead}}</ref> Approximately one month after its supposed release in 1981, ''Polybius'' is said to have disappeared without a trace.<ref name="coinop.org">{{cite web|date=September 28, 2014|title=Polybius Entry at coinop.org|url=http://www.coinop.org/Game/103223/Polybius}}</ref>

The company named in most accounts of the game is ''Sinneslöschen''. The word is described by writer [[Biography:Brian Dunning (author)|Brian Dunning]] as "not-quite-idiomatic German" (a word constructed outside the norms of German-language usage and grammar) meaning "sense delete" or "[[Philosophy:Sensory deprivation|sensory deprivation]]". If it was real German vernacular, "Sinneslöschen" would be pronounced {{IPA-de|ˈzɪnəslœʃn̩|}}. Its 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.<ref name=":12" />

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.<ref name="ign" /><ref>{{cite journal|last=Farrington|first=Scott Thomas|date=February 2015|url=https://histos.org/documents/2015A02FarringtonALikelyStory.pdf |title=A Likely Story: Rhetoric and the Determination of Truth in Polybius' Histories|journal=Histos|volume=9|issue=29–66|page=40|quote=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.)| access-date=August 23, 2023 |archive-date=October 22, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201022204148/https://scholar.dickinson.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=faculty_publications}}</ref>

The first online mention of ''Polybius'' is a coinop.org article started in 1998, which extends the legend by claiming possession of a [[ROM image]] file from the 1981 arcade machine, claiming to have played it, and on May 16, 2009, promising to bring future updates pending an investigatory flight to Kyiv, Ukraine.<ref name="coinop.org"/><ref name="ign"/> The first known printed mention of ''Polybius'', exposing the legend to a mass-market audience,<ref name=":12" /> is in the September 2003 issue of ''GamePro''. The feature story "Secrets and Lies" declared the game's existence to be "inconclusive",<ref name="GamePro">{{cite magazine | magazine=GamePro |page=41 | url=http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/domestic/games/features/30667.shtml|title=Secrets & Lies |last=Elektro|first=Dan|publisher=GamePro.com| url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081202180456/http://www.gamepro.com/gamepro/domestic/games/features/30667.shtml|archive-date=December 2, 2008|access-date=August 24, 2023}}</ref> helping to both spark curiosity and spread the story.

==Reception==
[[File:EFOIA Request.png|thumb|A E-FOIA request for ''Polybius'' returned no results.]]
The alleged original ''Polybius'' arcade game is generally believed to have never existed, and the legend a hoax.<ref name=":12" /> [[Philosophy:Snopes.com|Snopes.com]], a fact-checking website, concludes the game is a modern-day version of 1980s rumors of "[[Social:Men in black|men in black]]". This led to the hypothesis that the government was hosting some sort of experiment and sending subliminal messages to the players.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/roundup.asp|title=Urban Legends Reference Pages: Hoax Round-Up|date=November 29, 2007|work=[[Philosophy:Snopes.com|Snopes.com]]}}</ref>{{failed verification|date=August 2023}} Magazines and mainstream news of the early 1980s do not mention ''Polybius''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.polygon.com/2017/6/17/15825030/polybius-rom-download-cia-reader-exhibits-antisocial-pattern-bulletin-terminate-orders-immediate-out|title=Was Polybius real?|last=Good|first=Owen S.|date=June 17, 2017|website=Polygon |access-date=November 5, 2017}}</ref> Aside from the mockup cabinets and games inspired by the myth, no authentic cabinets or ROM dumps have ever been documented.<ref name="ign"/>

Skeptics and researchers differ on when, how, and why the story of ''Polybius'' began. American producer and author [[Biography:Brian Dunning (author)|Brian Dunning]] believes it is an [[Social:Urban legend|urban legend]] that grew out of a mixture of influences in the 1980s. He notes real news reports that two players fell ill in Portland on the same day in 1981, one collapsing with a migraine headache after playing ''Tempest'',<ref name=":12" /> and another suffering from stomach pain after playing ''[[Software:Asteroids (video game)|Asteroids]]'' for 28 hours in a filmed attempt to break a world record at the same arcade.<ref name=":42">{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19811129&id=arRQAAAAIBAJ&pg=6688,7639998|title=Tummy derails asteroids champ|date=November 29, 1981|newspaper=The Register-Guard|access-date=October 13, 2014|via=[[Social:Google News Archive|Google News Archive]]}}</ref> Dunning records that the Federal Bureau of Investigation 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 evidence of tampering and recording high scores. Dunning suggests that these two events were combined into 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'', 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.<ref name=":12" />

Internet writer Patrick Kellogg believes that players claiming to remember having played or seen ''Polybius'' since the 1980s may actually be recalling the video game ''[[Software:Cube Quest|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.<ref name=":5">{{cite web|url=http://www.patrickkellogg.com/hobbies/polybius.htm|title=Polybius by Patrick Kellogg|last=Kellogg|first=Patrick|access-date=August 21, 2018}}</ref>

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."<ref name="silverman" /> ''[[Unsolved:Ripley's Believe It or Not!|Ripley's Believe It or Not!]]'' called ''Polybius'' "the most dangerous video game to never exist".<ref name="ripley">{{cite web | publisher=[[Unsolved:Ripley's Believe It or Not!|Ripley's Believe It or Not!]] | first=James | last=Whelan | title=''Polybius'': The Most Dangerous Video Game to Never Exist | url=https://ripleys.com/weird-news/polybius-the-most-dangerous-video-game-to-never-exist/ | date=October 5, 2022 | access-date=August 24, 2023}}</ref> ''Offbeat Oregon History'' says "There remains a possibility{{mdash}}a tiny one, really too small to measure — that the legend is true."<ref name="offbeat">{{cite web | website=Offbeat Oregon History | title=Story of sinister videogame almost certainly a myth | first=Finn J.D. | last=John | date=January 29, 2017 | url=https://offbeatoregon.com/1701e.polybius-legendary-sinister-videogame-428.html | access-date=August 24, 2023}}</ref> ''Portland Monthly'' calls it "one of Portland's craziest urban legends", comparing it to the CIA's [[Social:MKUltra|MKUltra]] mind control program of the 1950s-1970s.<ref name="dangerous"/>

==Legacy==
===Video games===
In 2007, [[Freeware|freeware]] developers and arcade constructors Rogue Synapse published a free downloadable game titled ''Polybius'' for [[Software:Microsoft Windows|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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://serious.gameclassification.com/EN/games/43494-Polybius/index.html |title=Serious Game Classification : Polybius (1981) |access-date=May 14, 2017}}</ref> To complete the illusion, Rogue Synapse's owner Dr. Estil Vance founded a Texas-based corporation bearing the name ''Sinnesloschen'' (without umlaut) in 2007.<ref name="Taxable Entity Search - Texas Comptroller2">{{cite web|url=https://mycpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/|title=Taxable Entity Search|website=Comptroller.Texas.Gov|access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref> He transferred to it the "Rogue Synapse" trademark<ref name=":7">{{cite web|url=https://trademarks.justia.com/765/64/rogue-76564186.html|title=Rogue Synapse Trademark of Vance, Estil – Registration Number 3052170 – Serial Number 76564186|website=Justia Trademarks|access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref> and a newly registered trademark on "Polybius".<ref name=":8">{{cite web|url=https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-application-process/search-trademark-database|title=Search trademark database|website=United States Patent and Trademark Office|access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref> Its website says that it is an "attempt to recreate the ''Polybius'' game as it might have existed in 1981".<ref name="attempt2">{{cite web|url=http://www.sinnesloschen.com/1.php|title=What is Your Pleasure Sir|website=SINNESLOSCHEN|access-date=June 1, 2017}}</ref>

In 2016, Llamasoft announced ''Polybius'' for the [[Engineering:PlayStation 4|PlayStation 4]] with [[Engineering:PlayStation VR|PlayStation VR]] support,<ref name=":10">{{cite web|url=https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/a-video-game-called-polybius-is-actually-coming-out-will-it-kill-you/|title=A video game called Polybius is actually coming out. Will it kill you?|last=Machkovech|first=Sam|date=October 8, 2016|website=Ars Technica|access-date=June 1, 2017}}</ref> released on the PlayStation store on Tuesday, May 9, 2017.<ref name=":11">{{cite web|url=https://store.playstation.com/#!/en-us/games/polybius/cid=UP4461-CUSA08328_00-LLAMASOFTPLB0002?emcid=or-st-107804|title=Polybius on PS4|date=May 9, 2017|work=Official PlayStation Store US|access-date=May 10, 2017}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Minter Polybius2">{{cite web|url=https://blog.eu.playstation.com/2016/10/07/sample-the-ludic-psychedelia-of-polybius-a-playstation-vr-exclusive-from-jeff-minter/|title=Sample the ludic psychedelia of Polybius|last=Minter|first=Jeff|date=October 7, 2016|website=PlayStation.Blog.Europe|access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref> He later acknowledged that his game was inspired by the urban legend but does not attempt to reproduce its alleged gameplay.<ref name="yakblog_origins2">{{cite web|url=http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=440|title=Polybius: Early Days|website=The Grunting Ox|publisher=Llamasoft|access-date=March 14, 2019}}</ref> It has a central cameo as the "main attraction" in the Nine Inch Nails music video "Less Than".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/13/nine-inch-nails-less-than-video-add-violence-polybius/|title=Nine Inch Nails' latest video taps into gaming legend|first=Timothy J.|last=Seppala|date=July 13, 2017|website=[[Software:Engadget|Engadget]]|access-date=July 14, 2017}}</ref>

===Other media===
''Polybius'' has cameos in many TV series, such as ''The Goldbergs'' (2013) and ''The Simpsons'' (2006). 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. An ''IGN'' alum said "''Loki'' has a ''Polybius'' arcade machine and I'm losing my goddamn mind."<ref name="ign">{{Cite web |last=Bankhurst |first=Adam |date=July 9, 2021 |title=Loki: The Strange Gaming Myth Behind That Polybius Machine in Episode 5 |url=https://www.ign.com/articles/loki-polybius-episode-5-disney-plus-gaming-myth-gaming-urban-legend |access-date=January 2, 2023 |website=IGN |language=en}}</ref> 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).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Meszaros |first=E. L. |date=July 31, 2022 |title=How Paper Girls Establishes Its '80s Sci-Fi Cred With an Urban Legend |url=https://www.cbr.com/paper-girls-1980s-sci-fi-polybius-urban-legend-prime-video/ |access-date=August 10, 2022 |website=CBR |language=en-US}}</ref>

''The Polybius Conspiracy'' is a 7-part podcast published in 2017, adapted from a canceled feature film project.<ref name="dangerous">{{cite magazine | magazine=Portland Monthly | first=Eleanor | last=Van Buren | date=November 8, 2017 | title=Polybius: The Most Dangerous Arcade Game in the World | url=https://www.pdxmonthly.com/arts-and-culture/2017/11/polybius-the-most-dangerous-arcade-game-in-the-world | access-date=August 24, 2023}}</ref><ref name="fake">{{cite magazine | magazine=Slate | title=The Polybius Conspiracy’s Story of an Arcade Urban Legend Is Twisty Fun. It’s Also Fake. | date=November 10, 2017 | first=Jacob | last=Brogan | url=https://slate.com/culture/2017/11/the-polybius-conspiracy-investigates-an-urban-legend-and-creates-one.html | access-date=August 24, 2023}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Unsolved:List of urban legends|List of urban legends]]
* [[Social:Satanic panic|Satanic panic]]
* Toynbee tiles

==References==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
* {{KLOV game|id=11344|name=Polybius}}, includes alleged cabinet photograph
* [http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20090628015102/http://www.bspcn.com/2008/04/11/7-greatest-video-game-urban-legends/ 7 Greatest Video Game Legends]
* [http://www.joltcountry.com/polybius.html Polybius home page]
* [http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-urban-legend-of-the-governments-mindcontrolling-arcade-game Article about the game in ''Atlas Obscura'']
* [https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0bf52h9/polybius-the-most-dangerous-arcade-game-ever-made- Eight minute documentary by the BBC]

{{Urban legends}}

{{Italics title}}
[[Category:Arcade video games]]
[[Category:Science and technology-related conspiracy theories]]
[[Category:Urban legends]]

{{Sourceattribution|Polybius (urban legend)}}