There is a video game that doesn't exist.
It's a myth:
an urban legend;
a hoax.
It's called Polybius - and you might have heard of it.
Let me take you back to 1981, back when arcade games were at their peak.
A multi-billion dollar industry, and a fever that had a grip on pop culture.
Video arcades were a new social nexus, and had sprung up everywhere.
Dimly-lit by neon light, adorned with garish carpet - they played host both to crowds of
teenagers - and cabinet after cabinet of the hottest games of the era:
Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga.
However, in an unnamed arcade in some sleepy suburb of Portland, there lurked something
more obscure.
A limited release of a game that would evaporate as silently as it appeared.
The stories are vague: the cabinet is described as plain, and the gameplay: 'weird looking';
abstract'; 'fast action with puzzle elements'.
Sometimes it's described as being particularly addictive, despite the unassuming appearance.
The only concrete details are the name, year of release and the company behind it: Polybius,
1981, Sinneslöschen.
Really, it was just like any other arcade machine - except for the side effects.
Reports of sickness, amnesia, night terrors and behavioural changes followed those who
played it.
It was no accident either, if you believe the rumours: instead a secret project by government
agency - developed from military tech for the CIA or some other men in black.
The machines were observed, gameplay records were taken - and then, after a month or so
- they disappeared without notice, along with any shred of evidence.
To this day, no authentic cabinets, boards or dumped ROMs have surfaced - but there are
some who claim to hold them.
Quite the yarn.
But could there be any merit to this myth - or even a basis in truth?
It's probably safe to assume that the story has been subject to quite some embellishment
- the accounts are full of conjecture and weasel words: 'supposedly', 'according to',
et cetera.
One thing remains consistent across all of the stories - and that's the name.
Polybius.
Why Polybius?
It's not novel - it belongs to a Greek of some repute, a prominent historian born in
Megalopolis, Arcadia.
This could be a deliberate choice to muddy search queries about the game - or perhaps
it was chosen on its own merits.
Polybius covered the Roman's rise to power in detail: an important primary source and
an early example of rigour in historiography.
He also lends his name to a simple cipher: The Polybius Square, in which letters are
substituted by their co-ordinates on a grid.
This doesn't tell us much, although the meaning of the name is interesting:
the Poly- prefix means 'many', and 'bios', 'life'.
'Many lives' from 'Arcadia'?
Convenient.
It could be coincidence - but we can assume whoever named the game has at least some knowledge
of either history - or cryptography.
Real or not, the name was chosen.
Another word consistent to the myth is the supposed developer or publisher: 'Sinneslöschen'.
It's a German word - almost - a not-quite-grammatical combination of Sinne, meaning 'sense', and
'löschen', meaning 'to erase'.
To erase senses.
To become senseless.
It seems to allude to the mythical side effects of Polybius, which implies a deliberate choice:
It's almost certainly not a real company, as there are no other games attributed to
them, nor any trace of company records.
So Polybius could be of German origin - but the incorrect grammar might also indicate
the use of machine translation, something chosen by a non-native speaker to sound suitably
obscure - or sinister?
There isn't much visual evidence for the game, and most can be discounted as fake - but there
is one screenshot that is consistently upheld as canon.
It's rather basic - a black background with a Polybius logo, copyright information and
credits - and nothing else.
However, compared to contemporary games from 1981, one thing stands out - the logo is unusually
large and detailed.
Back then, fancy graphics were confined to the printed marquees - every kilobyte of the
ROM was valuable, so most game titles were rendered in the standard font, or at a much
smaller scale.
This did change over the next few years, and by 1983 larger, more lavishly designed title
screens were more common.
The closest match in terms of style might be from Nintendo: their games favour large,
bold titles with similar lettering: perhaps Polybius drew inspiration from Vs. Pinball
or Duck Hunt?
Of course, both of these date to 1984 - which makes Polybius' 1981 claimed year of release
look spurious.
Perhaps it was just ahead of its time?
Another detail from the screenshot is the font used for the smaller text.
Those with a keen eye might recognise a similarity to those used by Williams games, such as Defender
or Robotron - and it's definitely a close match, but they're not identical.
The smallest, 5-pixel high text does match Robotron - but the larger, 7-pixel text does
not.
There is one game that comes closer, nearly a perfect match - and while still a Williams
title, it's the much less well-known 'Bubbles'.
It's still not a pixel perfect fit, but it's closer than any other: the minor differences
could be attributed to font hinting, JPEG artifaction - or perhaps a deliberate alteration.
In any case, the text is distinctly Williams - either Polybius is some lost prototype,
or the image was fabricated by someone who drew influence from their games.
The screenshot has been around almost as long as the myth, and is likely the original source
for the turquoise bubble-lettered logo.
It doesn't exactly give us much to go on - and it certainly doesn't reveal what the gameplay
might have been like.
There are some that claim to reveal more of Polybius - such as these vector-esque images
distributed on the now-defunct 'polybiuslives.com'
First emerging around April in 2008, there's little supporting evidence for their veracity
- all signs point to a fan-made creation.
Besides, it doesn't make sense - if you had the ROMs and were able to take screenshots
of a functioning game, why not show it in motion?
To see the game running would be a revelation.
There have been multiple people who claim to hold the Polybius ROMs: and yet there's
no sign of them anywhere.
However, there is no shortage of gameplay footage out there - but these are fan-made
interpretations: impressions of what Polybius may have been like.
One of the first emerged around April 2004, distributed by a site called gooddealgames.com
- the original source unknown.
With a spooky icon, it's clearly supposed to evoke the myth - and those who are brave
enough to run it are given a warning:
'The Polybius video game has been linked to impaired memory and psychological changes.
Game play may cause epileptic seizures in susceptible individuals.'
'Do you still want to continue?''
Click OK, and you'll be met with the familiar title screen (reformatted for a 4:3 monitor),
with the logo rapidly flashing while a sound effect plays - a sequence of rising tones.
The flashing continues until you press a key - and then: nothing.
The game exits with fatal error, and a message box that reads 'APRIL FOOLS!!
Send this urban legend to a friend.'
Interestingly enough, if you take the executable into a hex editor you'll find the 2Mb file
is not quite what it seems - the first 10 kilobytes consists of some data - but the
rest?
Empty space.
Acres of zeroes - terminated with a few bytes of text.
'April Fools!'
So we can write that one off as an obvious joke - but there is another game that has
become the dominant example when searching for 'polybius gameplay'.
It came from a site at sinnesloschen.com, the supposed developers of the original - but
the site explains that it's just a fan-made attempt to recreate what might have been.
Launch the executable, and you're presented with the obligatory warning screens: 'Do not
play this game', etc - and ominous mentions of cognitive interface and 'higher functions'.
A familiar logo appears, but this is no mere prank - there's an actual game amidst all
the spooky theatrics.
The gameplay is admittedly simple, giving you control of a ship that can move in, out,
or rotate the playfield.
Like the original legend insists, there's more to the game than simple shooting - glowing
shapes bearing numbers appear, and if these numbers match either digit appearing on the
base - or are evenly divisible - then you'll reduce the base's number by that amount.
Once the base reaches zero, you advance onto the next level - where the visuals get progressively
trippier.
Aside from the puzzle element, the gameplay resembles vector games like Tempest or Star
Castle - although some aspects are inconsistent with vector graphics, such as the swirling
backgrounds.
Entering the code '35-34-31-54-12-24-45-43' - the code that corresponds to 'Polybius'
on a Polybius square - grants access to the 'higher game functions'.
There's a host of extra settings here - some relating to 'auditory entrainment', 'subliminals'
and 'colour strobe' which disable some elements of the game.
Others are more fanciful, however - 'REM imprinting', 'Gameplay amnesia', 'Operant Paradigm Triggers'
- countless settings designed to inspire the right level of paranoia.
Cracking open the .exe's resources reveals the game was made in DarkBasic - a game creation
tool.
Using a more specialised tool called 'DarkExplorer' we can reveal all the game's assets - graphics,
sound effects, etc.
All of the subliminal aspects are laid bare - a variety of messages written in dark grey,
flashed briefly during gameplay:
'Obey', 'Consume', 'Submit': like something straight out of 'They Live'.
The sound effects are similar: most are synthetic tones, but some feature voice recordings,
and sounds of breathing: presumably these are played at a barely audible level.
Altogether, a pretty neat package for those who want to build their own Polybius cabinet
- but who's behind it?
The credits hidden in the 'higher functions' menu give us some insight: Ygor Euspanes,
PhD; and a mysterious number sequence - 4 8 15 16 23 42.
The numbers should be familiar if you've ever watched Lost - and it turns out the name is
equally cryptic: it's an anagram of 'Rogue Synapse'.
The whois data for sinnesloschen.com lists an email from the domain gawkerweb.com, which
in turn links to - roguesynapse.com.
It's the site of an arcade enthusiast with a particular passion for recreating fictional
arcade games: such as 'Space Paranoids' seen in Tron or the eponymous cabinet from 'The
Last Starfighter'.
It's a fantastic fan-made project, but as far as the Polybius myth is concerned - it's
just a tribute.
With the explosion of indie developers over the last decade, there have been quite a few
other interpretations made - both for desktop and mobile.
There was even a version made for the Atari 2600 - with very limited distribution at the
Retro Gaming Expo 2013.
Few of these later examples make any claims of authenticity, and they generally follow
a simple shoot-em-up formula.
One particularly recent game that bears the Polybius name is Jeff Minter's version for
PSVR.
Minter is a veteran game dev long noted for his unusual games and lightsynths: since 1981,
he's been responsible for a steady stream of psychedelic experiences.
Polybius stays true to the Minter mould, and with the rapidly strobing colours and breakneck
pace of gameplay, you can see why the game has pretty strong warnings before you start.
Its pulsating visuals and trance soundtrack mesh together to keep you in the 'zone': but
its intentions are benevolent, with subliminal messages reminding players of the virtues
of a nice cup of tea.
It's good... but it's Polybius in name only.
An homage to a legend.
"I certainly think there's some truth to Polybius - lots of random arcades have been used as
test beds for legendary unreleased arcade games, such as Marble Madness 2, and Primal
Rage 2.
Several other unreleased games have also been spotted in the background of old news reports,
so Polybius could have easily been one of those.
What I don't buy is the whole governmental conspiracy behind it - I mean, why would the
FBI want to test a machine that makes people nauseous not only in public, but also on children?
I mean, what possible benefit could they have from giving kids migraines?
Heh, if they really wanted to make kids feels sick - all they needed to do was wait ten
years for Nintendo to invent the Virtual Boy".
So despite all the promises, and these fan-made interpretations, nothing resembling a Polybius
ROM has ever surfaced.
A few fan-made versions and some screenshots of dubious origin are all that exist in the
digital domain - but arcade machines are physical things: so what about any physical evidence?
Of course, the original story tells of the machine's sudden disappearance - but what
if one unit was forgotten?
What if they weren't destroyed - but sequestered in some warehouse?
What if someone found one?
Well, there are those who claim they have.
The videos all follow a familiar pattern: a shaky camera led by rumours of arcade haul,
to the reveal: a dark cabinet bearing a familiar name.
Some even feature gameplay - normally it's just the Rogue Synapse version, but sometimes
it's something original.
And then - just as things are getting interesting: 'What was that?'
- Jumpscare.
Roll credits.
Invariably, it's arcade enthusiasts showing off their custom cabinet work - and having
a bit of fun in the process.
Who can blame them?
Polybius is an essential part of arcade myth - and to have your own machine is quite the
talking point.
Only one Polybius cabinet is unaccounted for - a low-resolution black and white photo that
appears on the Killer List of Video Games' entry for Polybius.
It's a Namco-style cabinet, dating from 1979 to 1981 - you can see the same style in Galaxian,
Galaga or Pac-Man examples.
The black panels and t-moulding most strongly suggest a Galaga cabinet with the decals removed
- but the sides appear to be lighter, perhaps white: which means it could be the rarer Bosconian,
or a converted Bosconian cabinet.
The controls don't match, however - just a single button and stick - and the coin-box
isn't consistent with Namco machines of that era.
It's period correct - definitely from the early 80s - but the dual steel plate style
is more likely to be from a Data East or Nichibutsu machine.
So it could be a custom build, repainted and assembled from spares - or even built from
scratch.
There's also the very real possibility that it's simply a photoshop - the Polybius marquee
could have been applied directly from the screenshot.
The low resolution and lack of colour make detecting a fake difficult - and I suspect
it's deliberate.
An original photo of a custom cabinet, perhaps - but it seems altered to fit the myth.
It's not just cabinets - sometimes someone will claim to have a circuit board from the
fabled game: such as the one featured here.
If it were real, it might even be playable (with the right connections) - or the ROMs
could be dumped and subsequently emulated.
It would be a very valuable find - if it were real.
This is definitely an arcade PCB - but it's not Polybius.
It's a bootleg Ms. Pacman with some minor photoshopping to obfuscate its origin.
It's not even enough to fool Google's reverse image search - so we can confidently ignore
this particular claim.
Manufacturing an arcade game is something which involves a lot of people - engineers,
programmers, artists: it's not a task undertaken solo.
So, with multiple people involved - surely by now someone would have come forward with
information?
Well, as it happens there have been a few - although whether they tell convincing stories
is another matter.
One testimony comes from an anonymous source who claims Polybius was associated with SEGA's
arcade division - he's known only as PRG017.
"I know I will not be believed - but still, I believe this must be told.
I have information on the video game called Polybius.
This game is real!
I was a programmer in SEGA's arcade division".
They play the myth straight, insisting that their secret project was designed to stimulate
specific parts of the human brain - with testers suffering amnesia and 'loss of arcadegame
fandom'.
They then go on to explain that the Sega Genesis CD made use of Polybius code fragments in
order to get 'the two processors synching up'
The account is poorly written, and loose on real detail - it leans rather too heavily
on the original myth, and the introduction of a link to SEGA doesn't seem to make much
sense.
The technical details are vague, and the timeline doesn't quite match up: the Sega CD wasn't
released until 1991, a decade after Polybius.
Given the overly-dramatic ending, unverified status and complete lack of supporting evidence
- PRG017 is a fraud.
Perhaps the most prominent claimant of responsibility is a man named Steven Roach: who, in a series
of posts in early 2006, claimed to be one of the original programmers of Polybius.
"I think it's about time I laid this to rest.
My name is Steven Roach.
Sinnesloschen was a company set up by myself and several other amateur programmers in 1978".
He says he's primarily based in the Czech Republic, where he set up a company called
Sinnesloschen with several 'mainly amateur' programmers that worked on 'component parts
for PCBs' with 'programming as a limited but very profitable sideline'
Interesting how a band of several programmers saw programming as a 'sideline', but anyway:
he goes on to detail the beginning of Polybius.
"We were approached around 1980 by a Southern American company that shall remain nameless
for legal purposes to develop an Arcade Game that centred around a new approach to Video
Game Graphics".
So a Czech company that specialised in PCBs was approached by an unnamed Southern American
company to develop an Arcade game which would be tested in a limited North American market.
Truly a global conspiracy!
He goes on to explain how the side effects started happening early in playtesting - and
how the resultant cover up might have inspired the stories of 'men in black'.
I'll be honest, the writing smacks of impostorship - It's all recounted in run-on sentences dressed
in dramatic language that wouldn't be out of place in a poorly written ghost story - and
several things just don't add up.
He claims to have been born in Rhyl in Wales, and moved to Czechoslovakia in 1965 at the
age of 15 'due to his parent's business interests' - an interesting proposition, given the fact
that the country was under communist control at the time.
He claims the Polybius name was chosen by one of his colleagues 'who studied Greek Mythology'
- but Polybius is a historical figure, not a mythological one.
The majority of his ramblings are just expansions of the original myth: and what little novel
detail exists is presented without proof.
I reached out to him via his email address - but received no reply.
He did reply to an interview call from bitparade.co.uk, however - where he answered some questions
about his role in making the game.
Disappointingly, much of it is copied verbatim from his original post - perhaps he wanted
to keep his story straight, or didn't want to expend too much creative effort in developing
the story.
He does go into more detail about the gameplay, however - describing the puzzle elements that
would later influence RogueSynapse's interpretation of the game.
In Cat DeSpira's 2012 article, 'Reinvestigating Polybius', she found a possible link between
Steven Roach and the Czech Republic: someone with that name was running a 'troubled teen'
facility in Brno.
The 'Morava Academy' opened in 1998 and was closed by authorities the same year.
However, this Steven Roach was originally a policeman from Utah - whereas the one associated
with Polybius claims to have been born in Wales: so perhaps it's just a coincident name.
Everything about Steven Roach reeked of a hoax.
I had one lead left to follow: the original claims were made on a few different sites
- but Roach was most active on the RetroGamer forums, where there are a number of follow-up
posts.
The thread goes on for several pages.
A few suspiciously new accounts are quite active - it seems someone might have been
using sock puppets to fuel discussion.
Later, a moderator confirms that several names are posting from the same IP - and stevenroach
is amongst them.
Most of these accounts were created specifically for the ruse: but the oldest had been used
in good faith.
I checked the post history - an introduction.
I had the prankster's full name, and an approximate location.
A quick google search turned up social media accounts that matched.
I sent him a tweet - and waited.
I originally said that I received no reply from Steven Roach via email - and this was
true at the time of writing, and up until a few days after I sent this tweet.
As if by magic, two and a half months after sending the original email, he finally gets
back to me.
I was approaching the end of this project - I didn't have time for his games.
I had to call his bluff.
So, I addressed him by his real name.
I said, 'Perhaps it's time to retire the Steven Roach persona?'
It was a long shot - and it didn't work.
He kept up the pretence.
Even in the face of the evidence I had, he wasn't going to give it up.
Shortly after, I received a reply on twitter from my suspect: My original enquiry was polite,
pretty straightforward - but the response was obtuse - hostile, even.
I wasn't going to get a confession - but by now I was fairly sure I'd found the guy responsible.
Let there be no doubt: Stephen Roach is a red herring - and his story?
Entirely fabricated.
"Most of what we know about Polybius comes second hand - and this lack of primary evidence
makes me suspicious of the whole thing.
However, what we do have is primary evidence for real events that are a bit like
some of the things that happened in the Polybius legend.
And it's quite easy to see how this could have been embellished or misunderstood to
create the Polybius story in these second-hand accounts as they're re-told.
History isn't necessarily what happened - it's what people say happened."
So, there's a lot of evidence wrapped within the Polybius myth - but not much of it is
convincing.
The same stories crop up time and time again, sometimes with embellishment - sometimes with
new theories, but never anything that links the game to its supposed origin in the arcades.
Making sense of it all and establishing the truth is a difficult task - and I'm not the
first to try.
Perhaps the best way to establish Polybius' origin is to start in the present - rather
than chasing unverifiable rumours from nearly 40 years ago, instead we can trace the evidence
that exists today back to its source.
This trail might not lead all the way to 1981 - but wherever it ends might provide insight
as to how this story began.
As a starting point, we can look to Wikipedia: its article history is transparent, and the
site has been around for a while.
On February 25th, 2005, the Polybius video game page was created - but this isn't the
first mention of the game on Wikipedia.
Going back to November 30th 2004, The main 'Polybius' article - the one about the historian
- was amended with a section titled 'The Arcade Game/Hoax'.
Going back further, there was a short-lived edit on the 29th of February the same year
that read 'Polybius is also the name of a possibly fictitious videogame in contemporary
folklore - related to Atari's Tempest, it legendarily led to mental illness in players.'
This is the earliest mention I could find - but what exactly prompted its Wikipedia
inclusion early in 2004?
The internet was young, and 'going viral' an as-yet unknown concept, but in August,
Polybius was featured on Slashdot, which was a pretty big deal back in 2003 - and it mentions
an inclusion in a recent issue of GamePro.
At the time, GamePro was 'The World's Largest Independent Multiplatform Gaming Magazine'
and claimed to be read by 'over 3 million gamers a month'.
In issue 180, cover date September 2003 - although published some weeks earlier - there was an
article called 'Secrets and Lies'.
The article featured six gaming myths, with each assigned a verdict: true, false or inconclusive.
Polybius was number six.
The article expressed doubts over the game's veracity - citing a lack of evidence and the
relative ease of fabrication - but it ultimately awards an 'inconclusive'.
It was this GamePro article that played an important role in propagating the Polybius
myth, exposing the game to a widespread audience that might not have had access to the internet.
It's not the origin of the story, but a key catalyst that transformed the game from obscure
rumour to a widespread legend.
"Yeah, I think GamePro was probably a primary source for gamers to find out about Polybius.
I think that writing about it in a national magazine certainly brought it to attention.
And then, of course, after it appeared in GamePro a lot of people then spread the legend,
then told their friends or asked other other people have you known anything about it and
probably added a lot of their own details along the way because that's how urban legends
work, right?"
Polybius' activity pre-Gamepro was much more subdued, but even in early 2003 the game was
still well-known to arcade enthusiasts.
It turned up on snopes' forums in July, and had mention in a hoax round-up sometime shortly
afterwards - asserting that 'This one is just a gag someone invented several years ago which
has now become enshrined on the web'.
Sometime shortly before February 15th 2003, an article on Polybius appeared on gooddealgames.com.
A familiar screenshot appears, and at some point there was also a link on the site to
the 'April fools' version of the Polybius executable.
Most interestingly, at the bottom of the article, there is a small banner with special thanks
- to a site called coinop.org.
Coinop.org is a resource for collectors and enthusiasts of arcade games: it features a
fairly comprehensive database of games, along with a knowledge base populated with repair
and maintenance documents.
The site is a common factor in many of these early articles - it seems they've had a page
on Polybius longer than anybody else.
Their description of the game is quite familiar - it seems most later articles have been based
on this one: the screenshot appears here, too.
At the bottom of the page is a creation date: the 3rd of August, 1998 - our earliest yet.
But is it verifiable?
The URI for this page has changed several times over its lifetime, so tracking down
the first date of appearance is tricky - but with enough digging (and copious use of the
wayback machine), we can attempt to discern an origin.
The current page's history only goes back to February 2014 - at this point URI rewriting
rules made things more human-readable.
The page prior can be tracked all the way back to 2003: before this the site used lengthy
GUIDs, with a minor change in 2002.
This URI is the oldest I could find on the coinop.org domain: which takes us all the
way back to June 21st, 2000.
The entire site moved domain around this time.
While it originally started on coinop.org, at some point during 1999 it was incorporated
into clickto.com - first as a subdomain (coinop.clickto.com), then later as a subdirectory.
It's here where we can track the Polybius page as far back as possible: a capture exists
from March 3rd, 2000.
Interestingly, the creation date of 1998 is missing: as is the screenshot.
However, there is a last modified date instead: given as the 6th of February, 2000 - along
with a note.
'New addition - anyone heard of this game?'
This seems to imply that the 6th of February is the date the page was added: I mean, it
says 'new addition'!
So why does the page today insist that it was created in 1998?
When did the 'date created' field first appear?
A capture from April 29th, 2003 lacks the page created date: the next capture has it:
this means it was added between these two dates.
The date might have been recorded before this but not displayed: but another possibility
is that the 'date created' field was made later on - and populated with a default value.
I suspect the latter case is true - principally because almost all the other game pages share
the same creation date, down to the 4am time.
It is possible that Polybius was present in the database back then - but there's absolutely
no evidence for it.
What we do have is a verified capture from early 2000 with a date of February 6th and
a claim of a 'new addition'.
I had nothing earlier in my timeline.
This could be our origin point.
Day zero.
The day the myth started.
So how can we prove this was the starting point?
Or, more accurately - how can we disprove it?
We're nowhere close to the supposed release date of 1981 - so is it possible to find any
earlier evidence?
Anything at all - a throwaway mention, a forum post, or magazine article?
Now, rumour has it that the myth first emerged on Usenet - circa 1994.
It's not as popular today, but Usenet was once the go-to place for news, discussion
and rumour.
It's also fairly-well preserved: Since 1995, Deja News has archived Usenet - and in 2001,
they were acquired by Google.
Today, Google Groups is the largest archive of Usenet posts, with the full deja archive
searchable, along with supplementary data that goes all the way back to 1981.
Its search is imperfect but with some patience we might get some results.
A broad search for 'Polybius' pre-2000 turns up some predictable results - it is the name
of a Greek historian, after all.
It is matters of history that most often come up - with the occasional reference to a Polybius
cipher in cryptological talk.
There's also a user named Polybius who was quite active in alt.mag.playboy between 1997
and 1998.
Narrowing the search domain to known groups helps improve results: and one in particular
is a nexus for arcade collectors - rec.games.video.arcade.collecting.
RGVAC for short.
These guys are invested in arcade rarities - because if something's rare, it's valuable.
So - Polybius would be right up their alley.
Once of the first instances of the word was posted in April, 2000 - just a couple of months
after the game first appeared on coinop.org.
Posted by a user called 'nymechanicalbr08', it links to coinop.org - a reply to a request
for information on an obscure German video game, which triggered an association.
The OP of this particular thread is a German fellow called Christian Windler - also known
as CYBERYOGI - but we'll get to him later.
On the 27th February, 2000 - just 3 weeks after it was first posted to coinop.org - a
user named 'Zube' posted a link to Polybius's page on clickto.com.
'No, not the Greek historian.
An arcade game.' he says.
'I am skeptical of the claims made on the following page, but they certainly make for
interesting reading.'
I actually spoke to Zube - I wondered how he had found Polybius.
He told me 'I simply wandered across it in one of my random walks on the net [...] It
was serendipity, nothing more.'
Google Groups' search is far from perfect, so it's possible we've missed something - so
what about other Usenet archives?
A manual grep of the UTZOO NetNews archive from archive.org - some 5GB of text when uncompressed
- yields just 3 results, all of which refer to the historian.
A discussion of the 'Evidence For The Historical Jesus' from net.religion.christian in 1985
and a passing mention in net.politics the same year.
I even tried a paid search of 'The Usenet Archive' - a site that claims to be broader
and more easily searchable than Google's inherited dataset.
I found zero results pre-2000.
If there's nothing within the Usenet archives, perhaps another domain entirely will prove
fruitful: perhaps there is a mention of Polybius in print?
Google Books describes itself as 'the world's most comprehensive index of full-text books'
- and it's freely searchable.
Searching for 'Polybius' between the years 1980 and 2000 yields several pages of results
- but every single last one of them refers to the historian.
Google Newspapers is a similar story.
Perhaps a more specific search is needed - within the enthusiast press, perhaps?
In the 1980s and 90s, video games were better served by magazines than any other media.
I searched nearly 200GB of gaming magazines - over 3,000 issues worth - for any instance
of the word 'Polybius'.
There were 3 results.
One from the September 1998 issue of Acorn User - a review of 'Ancient Greeks', a multimedia
CD-ROM.
Another pair from two adjacent issues of Commodore User: January and February, 1986.
Programming listings for 'Codes and ciphers on your Commodore micro' - and an implementation
of the Polybius square.
That's it - the only instances of the word 'Polybius' across 20 years of the gaming press.
If the Polybius myth existed prior to the year 2000, it wasn't widespread.
To my knowledge, no 20th century evidence exists.
It's impossible to say for certain - but with no trace of prior evidence, we can only presume
coinop.org is where the story began - and whoever posted it there might be responsible
for everything.
One name I've seen frequently implicated in the Polybius myth is a German fellow named
Christian Oliver Windler - also known as Cyberyogi, 'teachmaster of Logologie - the first cyberage-religion!'
The denizens of RGVAC were quick to pin the blame for Polybius on him - he had a bit of
a reputation, it seems.
It does all seem to fit - he was in the right place at the right time, and his interests
align - there's also the German connection with 'Sinnesloschen'.
However, I believe Cyberyogi is innocent.
"Stop harassaing me with this damn myth!
I didn't make Polybius, otherwise the men in black would now go after me.
I have absolutely nothing to do with it".
True, he did pull an April Fool's day prank in 2000 (he fabricated a supposedly-lost East
German variant of Phoenix):
True, he was interested in obscure arcade games - particularly trance-inducing 'zoner'
games;
And true - he is a little eccentric.
But why would a native German speaker use a mangled word - and if he didn't want to
be caught, why use German at all?
Why would he conduct two rather ornate pranks in the same year?
And why would he come clean about one - but not the other?
Critically, how did he get an entry for the game on coinop.org?
The coinop.org domain has been around since 1993 - although
the earliest page capture dates back to late 1996, approaching the limit of the wayback
machine.
Back then the domain was home to 'The Virtual Coin-Op Museum' - run by Stephen W. Ryner,
it was a collection of photographs and articles relating to arcade machines.
However, in 1998 Stephen offered the coinop.org domain to the users of the RGVAC newsgroup
- he didn't have the time to maintain it, and so sought someone who could make better
use of it.
He ended up giving the domain to a web developer named Kurt Koller.
By August 1998 Kurt had taken ownership of the domain - and had relaunched the site as
a games database.
In April, 1999 he moved the site to a subdomain of clickto.com - and, interestingly, he mentions
the addition of a German language version.
In early 2000 we see another flurry of activity: the coinop site moves from a subdomain of
clickto.com to a subdirectory instead.
It's around this time that the first evidence of Polybius emerges.
By August 2000, the coinop site had moved back to its own domain - where it has lived
ever since.
So who provided the information for the site?
The bulk of the games database is sourced from community-maintained lists of games (some
of which are still present in coinop.org's knowledge base) - and data contributed from
other sites and projects - the MAME arcade emulator, for instance.
Coinop.org has always had an open call for contributors - but the presented entries for
games are manually curated and incorporated into the database - presumably by Kurt.
He had exact control over what appeared on the site - and he's always had that control.
So perhaps he received a tip about Polybius?
Perhaps someone emailed him the description, and he reproduced it in good faith?
Maybe - but if his intent was to maintain an accurate list of games, why would he keep
the text unaltered if most of his arcade-collecting peers were quickly prepared to write it off
as a hoax?
Why would he update the entry in 2009 promising more information - 'stay tuned'? - information
that has yet to transpire.
Finally - Remember the GamePro article?
- the one that exposed Polybius to a mainstream gaming audience, and is perhaps the single
largest factor in the legend's persistence today?
I spoke to the author of that article, Dan Amrich, and asked him where he first found
out about Polybius.
"Kurt was the person who first tipped me off about Polybius.
I've thought about it for a long time and ultimately I came to the conclusion some years
ago that Kurt was probably just making all of this up and pulling the wool over my eyes
and he sent it in as a tip to see if I would bite - and obviously, I bit."
Everything pointed towards Kurt.
He was behind coinop.org - and thus responsible for the earliest confirmed emergence of the
myth.
As an arcade enthusiast, he would have been familiar with the games from Polybius' era
- in fact he owned some of them.
As a web developer, he would have had the necessary skills to forge a convincing-looking
screenshot.
He also had at least some familiarity with the German language - but he wasn't fluent,
hence 'Sinnesloschen'.
He's no stranger to internet fame, either - he's behind the 'Taco Bell 2 dollar bill
refusal' story, under the Usenet psuedonym 'Captain Sarcastic'.
Finally, he had a motive: he wanted to drive traffic to coinop.org - and when he sent a
tip-off to GamePro magazine, it paid off - and immortalised the legend.
In any case, to uncover the truth, I was going to have to speak to him.
So I emailed him - asked if he'd answer a few questions.
He said sure.
I asked him directly: Were you responsible for the game's addition to the site?
If not, who was the source?
Where did the screenshot come from?
His answers weren't helpful.
He insisted the game was present on the site since day one - 3rd August, 1998 - despite
the contradicting evidence.
He went on:
'The entry's wording on coinop.org is very specific.
That's all I'm allowed to comment on.'
Hmm.
I didn't expect a confession - but it was clear he wasn't going to let me ruin his fun
without some resistance.
By this point I was almost certain he was behind the Polybius myth - he was, at the
very least, complicit.
So he was definitely hiding something - but what did he mean by 'very specific' wording?
My mind was cast back to the connection between Polybius and cryptology: the Polybius square.
Could the 'very specific' wording of the Polybius entry be hiding something - a coded message?
At this point I'm not even sure: it could just be me reading between the lines, a wild
goose chase - but I suppose it's worth a try.
Re-reading the text I noticed some unusual things: the writing is odd, with rather too
many commas - and some peculiar wording choices.
There's also a spelling mistake: 'disappeard' with a missing 'e' - which is not necessarily
unusual, but it has gone untouched for 17 years.
Maybe he never noticed it?
But he did notice a spelling mistake on the Polybius Wikipedia article - there's an edit
by a 'Kurt S Koller' made on the 27th October, 2005 where he corrects the spelling of 'non-existent'.
So maybe - maybe the misspelling is intentional - but what does that mean?
Perhaps word length is a factor?
Perhaps his code needed a 10 letter word, and nothing else would fit?
Despite my suspicions my attempts to decipher a message (that may or may not exist) were
fruitless.
Besides, codebreaking was outside the scope of my intention.
We already had an origin - and we had a likely suspect.
Maybe I was hoping for something more?
During my search for Polybius' origin, I had seen numerous claims that the myth first emerged
on Usenet in 1994 - but I never saw any direct evidence for this.
However: There is one thing which definitely emerged on Usenet in 1994 - a puzzle that
has a startlingly similar name.
It's called the Publius Enigma: Anonymous claims of a hidden meaning within Pink Floyd's
'The Division Bell' album.
On alt.music.pink-floyd, an anonymous source emerged with cryptic clues.
Few believed it at first, but when the words 'Enigma Publius' appeared in lights at a Pink
Floyd concert: well, clearly there was something to it.
However - to this day, the Publius Enigma remains unsolved.
No hidden message was ever found.
The parallels could be a coincidence, but I know Kurt was active on Usenet at the time
- it's fairly likely he was familiar with this story.
Perhaps this might be part of the inspiration behind the Polybius myth?
There was no shortage of ideas for the avid prankster in the late 90s: government conspiracies
were en vogue due to the popularity of 'The X-Files'.
Couple this paranoia with the emergence of an exciting new digital frontier: the internet
was a fertile ground for ideas to spread - a critical mass of gullibility.
One hoax that gained traction around this time was the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
- proof that people will even believe stories of arbour-bound cephalopods if you tell it
earnestly enough.
This emerged at around the same time Kurt was working on coinop.org, and again may be
part of the inspiration for Polybius - particularly the link to Portland.
For as long as there have been internet hoaxes, there have been those who attempt to debunk
them: Snopes being perhaps the most famous example.
The site was born out of the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup - and while you won't find any trace
of the Polybius myth, there is some discussion given to video game related urban legends.
Some of them are quite familiar: we can even see hints of proto-myths which might have
help form Polybius.
One legend states that if you're able to attain a particularly impressive high score, government
agents - FBI, CIA or similar - would seek you out.
Why?
Who knows - recruitment, perhaps?
This is strikingly similar to the plot of 'The Last Starfighter' - in which a teenage
boy is contacted by aliens in desperate need of a saviour with his shoot-em-up skills.
Maybe the myth inspired the film, or vice versa - it probably doesn't matter.
The link between the FBI and arcades is further strengthened by the 'Winners Don't Use Drugs'
campaign that appeared in all North American arcade games between 1989 and 2000.
Quite how effective the anti-drug message was is not for me to say - but the FBI's seal
is imprinted on the memory of every arcade-goer from that time.
There's also the very real possibility that the myths were inspired by real FBI involvement
in the arcades - between bootleg machines, drugs and illegal gambling - it's entirely
plausible that the 'men in black' did raid the ocassional arcade:
or seize the odd arcade machine.
However, it's far less likely that there was a coordinated plan to control the minds of
gamers - although the CIA did conduct mind-control experiments with its MKUltra program.
It was really more of a test of the utility of psychoactive drugs in combat and interrogation
- long fodder for conspiracy nuts, but its lack of success is well-documented.
The government has dabbled in using video games as training aids - Atari's Battlezone,
for instance - and even Doom: but a full on mind-control conspiracy?
That's a pretty far out theory.
"I think that the idea of the government having its act together to the point where they could
put in an arcade game in a town and use it to neuro-linguistically program or otherwise
brainwash the populace is a pretty scary one just due to the fact that when I was a kid,
literally every politician that I can think of was terribly frightened by video games.
So the though that the government would understand techology and be be able to use that against
the rest of us - I think is inherently creepy, inherently cool."
Another film with shades of Polybius is the 'Bishop of Battle' from 1983 film 'Nightmares'
- a reflection of the feared potential harm of arcades, as a hyper-addictive game gradually
takes control of a boy's life - as he attempts to beat the mysterious 13th level.
The rapid rise in the popularity of arcades, particularly with children, caused a bit of
a moral panic in the early 80s.
Most concerns were relatively unfounded - the kids were there to play video games, not for
drugs or gambling - but even so, the pursuit of high scores through marathon play sessions
could prove deleterious.
In 1981, Brian Mauro of Beaverton, Portland suffered stomach discomfort after 28 hours
of shooting for an Asteroids record.
It wasn't the video game that caused it, but a heady mix of sleep deprivation with a cocktail
of caffeine and sugar.
The odd headache and upset stomach aside, it's difficult to find evidence of any serious
injury that has come from video games.
However, there was a arcade-related death reported in 1982: Peter Bukowski of South
Holland, Illinois was playing Berzerk when he collapsed.
It was a pre-existing heart condition, possibly aggravated by stress - but for some it was
evidence that an arcade game could directly cause harm.
One very real health risk that video games can pose is photosensitive epilepsy: to those
who are sensitive, flashing images or patterns can trigger a seizure.
In the earliest days of the arcades, this wasn't commonly understood - and so some flashing
effects could be pretty intense.
Couple that with a darkened room, long play sessions - despite not being particularly
common, eventually someone is going to have a seizure.
The first reported case of a video game triggering such a seizure was in 1981: Astro Fighter
was one game implicated around this time.
Today, you can see the lasting effect of these concerns: flashing effects are rare, and in
every manual, for every game - you'll find the same boilerplate disclaimer.
"Oh sure, back in the 90s, an episode of Pokemon appeared on Japanese television that caused
seizures and sent 700 kids to the hospital; and that was just at 30 frames per second,
imagine what you could do with a game at 50 or 60.
I bet there were some Atari games that gave susceptible kids an not-so-happy Christmas.
I watched that banned footage.
It made me feel weird."
The 'motif of harmful sensation' is a recurring theme in fiction, particularly in horror:
the idea that something can hurt you just by observing it.
From Medusa: to the Basilisk; The Ring; Polybius.
A long line of legends.
Sometimes they're self-propagating, like chain letters or 'U HAVE BEEN SPOOKED' memes.
It's a huge cliché, but somehow the notion that you shouldn't look compels us all the
more.
Culture is full of repeating patterns - and as Polybius took inspiration, it too has influenced
others.
It makes frequent cameos - seen in the background of The Simpsons: The Goldbergs; Batman Inc.
The Llamasoft version is a central focus in the 'Less Than' video by Nine Inch Nails.
We love to tell stories that send shivers down spines, and with usual cynicism suspended
- the Internet has brought a new dimension to horror.
Creepypasta is the latest face in a long line of folklore - and quite a few focus on video
games: I mean, even Polybius itself fits the description.
There's a whole parade of fictional games with a dark secret:
The tale of a haunted Zelda cartridge told in Ben Drowned;
A forbidden game from the dark web in Sad Satan;
and the supposedly lost Playstation title Petscop.
It's a form of horror with mainstream appeal - hence the popularity of Minecraft's Herobrine,
Slender Man - or Five Nights at Freddy's.
It seems we have a hard-wired attraction to mystery - A desire to cast light on our fears:
and on what might lurk in the shadows.
Gaming is full of secrets, and in a social setting like an arcade they can spread like
wildfire.
Rumours about hidden screens, secret characters and levels abound: most were gated behind
skill demands - difficult to execute, and so nearly impossible to verify.
It was easy to believe such secrets existed - and to a younger observer, witnessing an
arcade technician accessing the diagnostic menus must have been mind-blowing.
Hidden options, behind lock and key - cryptic messages on-screen such as the 'Special Function'
seen in within the Defender service options.
It's no wonder that teen imagination ran riot with possibility.
So what does the 'Special Function' do?
It exits the diagnostic menu and returns to the game.
That's it.
Invariably, when you cast a light on things, they turn out to be mundane: but the sounds,
and the experience of the arcades were a lot to take in.
With each play costing a coin, most of us could only scratch the surface - some games
relegated to a fleeting glimpse, lost to memory.
The human mind is an unreliable thing when it comes to recollection, and when we hear
stories like Polybius the mind scrambles to make connections - somewhere, somehow.
Maybe this is why some people swear they remember: perhaps a lost memory triggered, the details
hazy - but it have must have been, surely?
Simutrek's Cube Quest from 1983 would have left quite an impression on anyone who saw
it: its hypnotic visuals and tempest-style gameplay were unlike anything else of the
era.
However, it was an expensive cabinet - and probably more expensive per-play to recoup
costs: and Laserdisc games were notoriously unreliable.
It's entirely possible such machines would disappear silently and without trace - not
for conspiracy's sake, but for simple profitability.
There are plenty of rarities out there that went uncatalogued for a long time: take the
East German 'Poly-Play' from 1985, for instance.
Poly Play has been implicated in the Polybius myth - the name is similar, after all - and
even the stylised 'P' on the cabinet bears a similarity to Polybius' logo.
Previously forgotten, one example appeared at Berlin's Computerspielemuseum around 1998
- just prior to the emergence of Polybius.
There were a thousand or so units made - they were found in swimming pools, leisure centres,
all over.
But when the Berlin Wall fell, the machines were recalled - and destroyed.
Just a few remain.
Perhaps a government cover-up?
Or maybe just an attempt to recover state-owned assets for profit?
Who knows.
Not every machine was as successful as Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, or Galaga.
There are countless games long forgotten - obscurities, bootlegs, and prototypes of no interest to
anyone but collectors.
Not every game was catalogued, not every ROM dumped - and with the passage of time and
the destruction of cabinets -
Some may even be lost.
It's a worrying void of uncertainty.
What if a game called Polybius did exist after all?
It could be real!
Like Russell's teapot, it's impossible to entirely disprove its existence - but the
burden of proof lies with those telling the story.
With absolutely no evidence that pre-dates the original story, it's safe to assume that
it's just a myth.
But from this melange of arcade mystery, a myth like Polybius was almost inevitable.
And so, as the internet came of age, that's how it began:
A man inspired saw opportunity, and hatched a plan.
A sprinkling of detail - touch of paranoid nerve:
Add a mysterious screenshot - and you're ready to serve.
It wasn't enough for collectors well-seasoned -
most were quite cynical, and with good reason.
As the tale almost stalled, a new trick was needed:
a magazine tip-off ensured exposure was seeded.
An explosion of interest, and any doubt drowned -
curious waves of the gullible inbound.
By now, the story was simply too big to kill:
Inscribed in folklore, echoed in forum posts still.
An in-joke for arcade fans of spooky allusion
and for low-effort listicles, an essential inclusion.
An indelible myth, but at least we know the deal:
Polybius never existed -
but the legend is real.
Thank you very much for watching - and until next time, farewell.