What about the government agents? Law enforcement would put cameras and wires inside arcade machines, hoping criminals would spill their beans between rounds of gaming. Tempest has graphics in line with Polybius’ rumored pixels that could have been confused for the cursed cabinet. In a report from Cat DeSpia, on the same day in the same arcade, 14-year-old Michael Lopez suffered from a migraine and threw up in the parking lot after a long session of Tempest. Instead of being put in a Polybius-like trance, Mauro’s stomach couldn’t handle the endless supply of soda he drank, fizzling up his chance at beating the high score.
In a Portland arcade, the Eugene Register Newspaper outlined the story of Brian Mauro, a 12-year-old who experienced stomach pains while playing Asteroids for 28 hours straight. While players may not have experienced the side effects of long arcade sessions through Polybius, many reports of them getting sick while playing games. The artwork was not applied until the arcade cabinets were ready for a wide release. While the myths of Polybius made it seem a treacherous plot was unfolding in Oregon arcades, these rumors were disputable with real-world evidence.Īs for the soulless, blank cabinets used for Polybius, black cabinets were utilized as test machines for new games. “Sinneslöschen” also means “mind erasing” in German, at least according to Google Translate. No copyright was ever filed for the game at the time, to the point of the FBI confirming it never existed in the first place. The Polybius start screen lacks any significant detail apart from the game’s title in large letters and “1981 Sinneslöschen Inc.” The latter text is the supposed copyright date and game developer, but neither seems to check out. The database page provided the basis for myths surrounding the game, alongside an image of the start screen. Online Myths and Tricksĭespite its apparent haunting of 1980s arcades, the first public record of Polybius surfaced in February 2000 on, a database for arcade games. Whether Greek or geek, this sounds concerning. Many thought that government workers used Polybius as an extension of MKUltra, government experiments ran by the CIA to determine ways to mind-control the populace through hypnosis and drugs. Eventually, these same workers removed the game from arcades one month later, with Polybius never returning to any establishment ever again.
Combined with reports of government workers in black suits removing not quarters but data from the arcade machines, surely something sinister was afoot. When players fell under the spell of Polybius, the gameplay seemed to deliver subliminal messages to them. Credit: Manfred Werner – Tsui Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
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