Polybius (game)
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Polybius is supposedly an arcade game, thought to be similar in genre to Atari's Tempest, and the subject of an online urban legend. The following is a summary of the urban legend:
- In Portland, Oregon in 1981, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs, something of a rarity at the time. This game was called "Polybius". The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and queues formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects—amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and suicide appearing as having been caused by the game in various versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist.
The origin of the legend is unknown. Some think it originated as a usenet hoax by a curious character named Cyberyogi, whose real name is Christian Oliver Windler. Others believe that the story is a true urban legend—one that grew out of exaggerated and distorted tales of an early release version of Tempest which caused problems with photosensitive epilepsy. The game was reported to have caused motion sickness and vertigo, and was therefore pulled.
Several people had claimed to have a ROM of the game, but none of them have made this ROM available for public scrutiny, a "lack of hard evidence" situation typical of hoaxes and conspiracy theories. Indeed, there is even a lot of conflicting information about what the game is even like. Some sources claim it is a maze-style game while others describe it as an action space-fighter.
Steven Roach
On the 20th of March 2006, a man under the name Steven Roach made a post on http://coinop.org/, which tells the story of his involvement to Polybius, and how he hopes to 'lay it to rest'. He claims to have been working for a South American company which wished to promote a 'new approach' to computer graphics (probably vector graphics). The game was claimed to be very inventive and addictive, but the graphics - through mistake rather than design - were dangerous and prompted epileptic fits. The product was recalled, the subcontractors, Sinneslöschen, were disbanded and the program was lost.On 26 April 2006 Duane Weatherall of Gamepulse.co.uk interviewed Steven Roach after Roach posted this message onto another forum. The Roach story contained a number of inconsistencies: some of it, indeed, seems to be sourced from Wikipedia, such as the suggestion of Cyberyogi's involvement, which was the product of extensive searching through Usenet archives on the part of a Wikipedian. The interview also included some of Roach's background, including the revelation that he comes from Rhyl, and a possible recreation of the storyline.
External links
- [The game's entry on coinop.org]
- [The game's entry] in the Killer List of Videogames, includes cabinet photograph
- [A supposed .exe file of the game (Fake April Fool's joke file)]
- [Scott Sharkey's humorous article on the game.] Warning, contains a mild screamer.
- [The interview with Steven Roach]
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