The Polybius Legend

[Music] according to an urban legend in the early 80s there existed an arcade game known as Polybius this game can only be found in a few arcades in Portland Oregon the game was extremely popular and addictive they would result in huge lines people fighting over who would play next according to the legend men in black would periodically visit these machines to record the effects the game had on people's minds some players allegedly suffered from amnesia insomnia night terrors and hallucinations about one month after play base was released the game disappeared from every arcade without a trace The Legend of the elusive game Polybius has been around since the 90s in 1998 a post is made to an arcade game resource website called coin op org which described a polybius legend the company that created the game was listed as Cinna sloshin this word translates from German as sense delete or sensory-deprivation as far as the actual gameplay goes the game was described as being a puzzle slash space shooter genre this legend began to spread very quickly being featured on a lot of other websites it was discussed on the above top-secret message boards the Museum of hoaxes and there was even a website called the police theory does created to gather any information about the game Polybius evening appearance in an episode of The Simpsons who got these high-schoolers pilgrims hmm never saw this one before this legend has been analyzed and debunked by several different sources one example of this is Snopes in 2003 a topic of polybius was brought up in a thread on Snopes comm and they came to the conclusion this was a hoax this is mainly because every document relating to the game led back to coin op org where the legend originated in addition the only thing released about the game at the time which is a picture of the title screen but no actual gameplay is ever shown or described the website GamePro calm also made an article about Polybius and enlisted the game's existence as inconclusive for much of the same reason as Snopes did there was little to no proof to verify the existence of the game when it comes down to in most articles is that there's little evidence of the game's existence therefore there isn't much of a reason to believe it ever did exist still the origin of his Legend may be puzzling Brian Dunning from skeptoid comm wrote an article about Polybius in which he revealed some shocking facts back in 1981 the same year the police is said to have existed a kid named Brian Morrow played asteroids in an arcade in Portland Oregon for 20 hours to try and break a record he had to stop playing eventually because he was getting a pretty bad stomachache while playing on the same day in the same arcade a kid named Michael Lopez is playing Tempest and ended up getting a migraine headache later on he collapsed from how bad the headache was 10 days after this happened FBI agents raided several arcades in Portland Oregon under the suspicion that the owners of the arcades were illegally using the arcade games for gambling the games would be modified with counters so that players with the highest scores were paid by the owners to bring in more business to prepare for the raid FBI agents who go to these machines and take pictures of the players names on the high score screens and respect the machines for counters this definitely could have played a role in The Legend of Polybius there are a lot of similarities for one both The Legend and this true event happened in Portland Oregon in 1981 they both involved people falling ill after playing an arcade game and they both involve federal agents inspecting machines with all that combined it's easy to see how such a legend could have been born from this this legend does inspire people to create fan-made polybius games based off the legend one of the most popular versions is the PC version created by rogue synapse the game plays partially based off another game called star Castle but it also has details that were described by someone named Stephen Roche in 2006 who claimed to have played the original polybius game in a story was later determined to be filled with inconsistencies regardless as fan-made plea based game could be downloaded at sinha slash ENCOM because this game uses the same title screen as shown in the pictures of the legend some people have actually been able to create Polly Bea's arcade machines using this version of the game claimed that they found one of the few remaining Polybius games [Music] regardless of the origins of the legend it's definitely really impressive seeing how much that's grown and still being talked about even now thank you for watching and I'll see you on the flipside [Music] you

Channel: ScareTheater

Views: 279,688

Rating: 4.9393616 out of 5

Keywords: Scare, Theater, ScareTheater, Theatre, ScareTheatre, the, polybius, urban, legend, arcade, game, real, or, fake, hoax, debunked, explained, analysis, scary, creepy, insomnia, night, terrors, nausea, amnesia, video, myth

Id: 5ZmT93Ot5N4

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2017