The long-running mystery of polybius

How do urban legends come to fruition in the first place? Via an exaggeration of real-life events? Or a bunch of stories we made up to combat boredom? Or perhaps a little bit of both? In any case, the fact remains they continue to tantalize & intrigue us to this day & in the gaming community, never was there a more intriguing urban legend than that of polybius. Did it ever really exist & how much do we know for sure about this long-running mystery? Well, that’s what we’re here to get to the bottom of.

So here’s what we know. Reports indicate sometime in the year 1981 in Portland, Oregon there was a new arcade game on the market set to take the world by storm, polybius (presumably named after the greek historian). Supposedly, it became immensely popular & addictive but soon led to seizures, insomnia & night terrors (among other things). Some people even claim men in black would show up every now & then to collect data from the machines & that the game was all part of some sort of mind control experiment run by the government. A few suspect it may have been part of (or, rather, an extension of) project mkultra. Then approximately one month after its debut, these arcade machines just vanished without a trace.

The thing is, though, there’s no evidence that polybius ever actually existed. There is no mention of it in any of the mainstream news or magazines of the early 80’s & no authentic cabinets or rom dumps have ever been documented (just a few mockups here & there). In 2006, a man steven roach came forward as the man behind the game but provided zero evidence of its existence. As such, his claims were easily debunked by those in the gaming community. There was even an e-foia request for polybius to the fbi in 2017 but it turned up zero results. Supposedly, it was made by a company known as sinnsloschen but there are no other games in the world attributed to them & there’s a not a single company record or any shred of evidence this company ever existed, so it definitely seems to be a fictional organization. Additionally, despite it reportedly showing up in 1981, there is no public record of this game ever existing prior to the 2000's. Of course, there were various youtubers who claim to have discovered a long-lost arcade cabinet of polybius but the veracity of those types of claims were never confirmed & various clues in the videos strongly hint at it being nothing more than clickbait. So it’s highly unlikely that this game ever actually existed but rather a manifestation of someone’s overactive imagination.

So is there any truth to this story? Well, almost every urban legend has at least some basis in fact & it seems polybius is no different. There were in fact two kids unacquainted with each other who collapsed on the same day after playing games at the same arcade (one had a migraine & the other stomach pains) after playing a video game, but it was not because of the game. Reports from back then are a bit unclear but it seems one of them was playing arcade games for so long, it had an adverse effect on him while the other reportedly suffered from insomnia or something along those lines. Reports attribute some of that stomach discomfort to the fact that the kid, brian mauro, had a bit too much coke to drink. Reports also suggest the real polybius is in fact tempest as that’s the game they were playing before collapsing but the point is it wasn’t any one game in particular that caused it. It was just an arcade & soda overdose; too much of anything is not good for you.

So what about the men in black? Well, that was clearly embellished but there does seem to be a bit of truth to it. Back in the 80’s, for some reason, the government was concerned about people gambling on arcade games (which is not as dumb as it sounds; it’s even dumber). So some of the more disreputable arcades would have the fbi install cameras in the arcade cabinets to try & catch anyone who might be looking for a good wager. & then they would come in to check the footage to see who was trying to gamble on these games. As for the name itself, it’s very on the nose. You see, polybius was actually born in (you guessed it) arcadia & one of his most famous quotes was “historians should never report what they cannot verify through eyewitnesses.” So clearly whoever came up with the name was nothing if not well-versed in greek historians. I mean this could all be a coincidence, but it seems more likely polybius was nothing more than a fact-based rumor (as oxymoronic as that may sound) that spread way out of control. The general consensus seems to be it wasn’t any one person who started this myth but, rather, a bunch of people who just spread it around over time.

& it actually makes sense when you think about it. I mean if MIB’s really were running some sort of secret crowdsourced psychology experiment, why would they come in dressed like feds? Why wouldn’t they disguise themselves as maintenance men or something to avoid drawing attention to themselves? Not to mention if a whole bunch of kids were suffering these kinds of adverse effects, don’t you think it would’ve been a much bigger headline in the news? The only confirmed kids we know about are the two who collapsed on someone else’s lawn (at least one of them did; we’re not entirely sure what happened to the other). At some point, someone probably would have reported it to the authorities but there’s no evidence that ever happened.

Regardless, the myth has become somewhat of a reality. In recent years, it has since become a real game created by rogue synapse & downloadable for windows with the gameplay designed to feel much like the description of the game that supposedly existed back in the day. It has since become available for ps4 with some vr support for those who have the headsets. It’s also become ubiquitous in pop culture, making cameos in series such as the goldbergs, the simpsons, paper girls & most recently, loki. It’s even spawned its own seven-part podcast known as the polybius conspiracy (albeit with a more fictional aspect to it). Despite the game never actually existing, the legend itself seems to have to taken on a life of its own & that’s something no one can ever take away from us.