Polybius is a mythical arcade game, thought to be similar in genre to Atari Tempest, and the subject of an online urban legend.

The Story

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.

The supposed creator of Polybius is Ed Rottberg, and the company named in the urban legend is "Sinneslöschen", (literally sense-delete) often named as either a secret government organisation or a codename for Atari.

The source of the legend is currently unknown. Some think it originated as a usenet hoax by a curious character named Cyberyogi , whose real name is Christian Oliver Windler . Other's 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. Several people have claimed to have a ROM of the game, but, conveniently, none of them have made this ROM available for public scrutiny, a "lack of hard evidence" situation typical of hoaxes and conspiracy theories.

External Links

• The game's entry on coinop.org
• Lucky Wander Boy, a novel with a similar theme
• Scott Sharkey's humorous article on the game