(suspenseful music)
- [Instructor] Welcome to Part 6 of your training.
Let's meet the device you'll be working with.
This is Polybius.
On the outside, it may look like an ordinary arcade cabinet.
But on the inside,
Polybius holds advanced surveillance systems,
perfect for tracking user behavior.
Careful! Users may experience some slight side effects.
The Polybius machine, the future of covert surveillance.
- [Narrator] Between the 1950s and 1970s,
the CIA was experimenting with alternative ways
to weaken the enemy.
The program was called Project MKUltra.
The CIA tested on unaware subjects,
using hypnosis and psychoactive drugs
in order to find the perfect interrogation method.
In 1976, the secret program was exposed to the public.
The revelation spurred countless conspiracy theories
that film producers were quick to pull from.
Movies like WarGames and The Last Starfighter
combined paranoia thrills and video game sensibilities.
But movies weren't the only things inspired by MKUltra.
Beyond the theater marquees,
one of the biggest video game urban legends was brewing.
And it all started with a mysterious arcade cabinet
that suddenly appeared in the quiet town of Portland.
(upbeat pop music)
This is Logan Bowden.
- I am Director of Operations here
at QuarterWorld Arcade in Portland Oregon.
- [Narrator] Logan loves urban legends.
- Oh, yeah, I love 'em.
- [Narrator] And he's kind of become a connoisseur
of the weird and wonderful myths from Portland's past.
- I've been gathering the local lore.
As Portland goes, you quickly learn a lot
about what Portland was and the folklore that surrounds it.
- [Narrator] Folklore like Polybius,
Portland's most infamous legend,
which he learned about while watching TV with a friend.
- We were watching “The Simpsons” episode
that has the Polybius in the background.
And he started laughing.
And I had no idea what he was talking about,
so he filled me in.
(suspenseful music)
The legend of Polybius, the short and skinny of it is,
around 1981, this arcade cabinet appeared in a few arcades
in the outskirts of Portland.
Now if you played this game,
it was said that you would have seizures,
fits of amnesia,
night terrors,
and also just a complete desire
to continue playing this game.
- [Narrator] So why would someone inadvertently
create a video game that had all these effects?
Perhaps, it was on purpose.
- Supposedly, every couple of weeks,
these strange men in black suits would show up.
And they wouldn't take any money out of the machines,
they would just open up the back,
supposedly, maybe, taking some readings of data,
perhaps a continuation of MKUltra.
And then, after about two months,
just as mysteriously as they appeared,
poof, disappeared, and they've never been seen since.
- [Narrator] And so a myth was born,
and with it came a legion of believers and skeptics
trying to decipher fact from fiction.
(rhythmic electronic music)
This is Brian Dunning.
He makes a living debunking outlandish stories
and has heard many tall tales.
So Brian, tell us why the story of Polybius
was a little different?
- It turned out, kind of much to my surprise,
that just about every piece of evidence supporting the story
was true.
First, two kids actually did get knocked out
playing video games in Portland, Oregon in 1981.
Second, 10 days after that,
the government actually was raiding arcades
and taking games out.
Third, we know the games were used by the government
for training.
And finally, there was a game called Poly-Play.
It was a case where this game was physically removed
from every arcade in which it existed.
- [Narrator] So it seems like
all the pieces of the puzzle exist,
leading to a confirmation of the legend, right Brian?
- Arcade culture is extensively documented.
They had trade magazines.
They had consumer magazines.
And in all of those issues, throughout the entire 1980s,
there is not a single mention anywhere
of a game called Polybius.
We know for a fact that it did not exist.
- [Narrator] But proprietors of the legend
weren't quite willing to let the myth die.
(dramatic organ music)
So they began to design
different elements of the game themselves.
School teacher and dedicated arcade builder,
Paul Santa Cruz, is working hard
on bringing the legend to life.
(dramatic organ music)
- [Paul] One day, it kinda popped in my head,
"You know what, I'm gonna make a Polybius."
- [Narrator] But how, exactly, do you make a Polybius?
Well in 2007, an underground community of gamers
actually developed a hypnotic video game
and marquee graphics inspired by the myth.
It's what they thought the game could actually look like.
Paul decided to take the work one step further
and build a fully-custom arcade cabinet.
- Everything was there that I needed.
The graphics were there.
The game was there.
So maybe the cabinet wanted to exist in real space and time.
I wanted people to see it
and stop and turn to their friends
and say, "Wait a minute, is that really it?"
I wanted it to be part of that mythos.
(rhythmic electronic music)
- [Narrator] So there you have it,
the story of how a video game legend
became an arcade reality.
- I don't think it matters at all
that the legend is true or false.
It's just a fun thing to follow.
- I had a lot of people tell me
the cabinet was cool
and didn't have any interest in playing it
because they weren't gamers.
But they loved the fact that this thing existed.
- If Polybius didn't exist, it does now,
minus the seizures and amnesia.
You're not gonna, like, be a sleeper cell, or are you?
(rhythmic music)