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Polybius Game Urban Legend Resurfaces
Eric Greif writes "I've just discovered information on an odd arcade game from 1981, only released in some backwater suburbs in Portland, Oregon. This game
was called Polybius and was apparently featured in a recent article in GamePro
magazine. This game boasts strange effects on the players of the game, such
as various forms of amnesia, as well as behavior and mood changes." GamePro say that " Credited to a company called Sinnesloschen [German for 'sense-deleting'], Polybius... was an abstract puzzle game... one arcade owner claimed that black-coated gentlemen would periodically come to collect data - but not coins - from the machines." Snopes.com call Polybius out as a hoax, correctly, but after all this recent attention, does anyone know who devised this elegant spoof, and when?
I seem to recall a similar concept being presented in a comic book in the early to mid eighties. I suspect it was a Marvel comic featuring a team of heroes. In fact, I quite clearly recall that another part of the storyline was that the machines were powered by kidnapped children (in addition to erasing player's brains).
However, posted to Usenet by yours truly:
Every mention I've seen (coinop.org, gooddealgames.com, etc) is extremely skimpy on details such as names, dates, and specific arcades. The general story at the moment is that in less than a dozen arcades in a suburb of Portland, OR in the early 1980s, Polybius was
introduced. It was an abstract action/puzzle game which did't really attract much attention to itself. However, some people who played it reported incidents of amnesia, forgetting important details about their lives, such as their name, or where their home was. Further, some reported terrible nightmares.
The story further states that most of the kids who played Polybius swore off video games entirely, and that one became a big anti-videogame advocate (some instances of the story mentioning him as a lobbyist). However, no names are given.
Lastly, at least one former Portland, OR arcade owner claims that men in black suits would periodically come in to gather data from the machine, but not quarters. Again no names given.
Examining the logic of the story, however, makes it extremely suspect. If such a thing had truly happened, then the conspiracy in question didn't really do anything to avoid attention. In fact, they did almost everything they could to -attract- attention.
Picture this:
ARCADE OWNER: Oh, hey, you must be here to look at the Polybius machine.
MAN IN BLACK: Why do you say that?
ARCADE OWNER: Because you're wearing a black business suit, stupid. This is an arcade, not a juice bar. By the way, aren't you going to take the quarters or something?
MAN IN BLACK: No. I'm getting data.
Etc.
Now, if such a thing -had- happened, it should have set off warning lights all over the place.
On the other hand, my paranoid brain just spat out a possible explaination other than the "we're being obvious because no one will believe it" explaination that conspiracy theories so often use. How about "we're being obvious because some people will believe it, and we want to control what you believe?"
Fact: In 1983, video games were becoming a serious contender for consumer money.
Fact: In 1983, the public at large did not percieve video games as something to be regulated or monitored.
Fact: They do now.
Some other things to consider: Video games cannot induce amnesia or hallucinations. In fact, no form of video/audio stimulation can without exceptional chemical circumstances.
However, drugs can. Astonishingly, there are drugs which could have produced the exact reactions the children who played Polybius experienced. Many of these could be delivered via touch, or through the air to be inhaled. It wouldn't be too hard to hide a delivery system in a thing as massive as an arcade cabinet, but even that runs a risk: What if someone got hold of the cabinet?
Does everyone remember those bean-bag ashtrays that used to be all over the place? Acades were cluttered with them. Ever know of an arcade that actually cleaned them out?
It wouldn't be too hard to hide a delivery system in one of those, and no one would notice if a vapor seemed to be coming from an ashtray.
In other words, if the whole Polybius thing did happen, the whole thing is a smokescreen for political manipulation to demonize video games so that the government could control them. The game itself was a red herring.
Beware the ashtray.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Kids, I grew up in West Michigan and live in Portland and on the scale of "who has more atavistic hicks mired in 19th century thinking," Holland Michigan and Ottawa County lead the pack.
Advice: on VPS providers
Yeah, you can do it too. I'd post the proof, but I don't really have any web space, and it's more fun to do yourself, and, hey, it only takes 20 seconds. Well, you need photoshop first. Basically just load up the supposed screen shot, go to Image-Ajust-Levels. In the levels drag the middle slider underneath the little graphic representation all the way to the left. What do you see? Just as I expected, a clear differentiation between the copy/pasted text from a real game and the pure black background. It looks like little rectangles of colored blocks around the text that fills the rectangle, and outside of that it is pure black. Basically the pure black background can't get any blacker, and no matter how much brightness/contrast/saturation you add to pure black, it stays pure black. Well, the real background from the screen grabs this faker got to copy-paste the letters together to make the words, or really whatever method he used, have a speckled background. There is a clear rectangular border around all three parts. It's oddly shaped, too. Not evenly surrounding each part of text, which could conceivably be jpg encoding artifacts, but it's a clear border that extends about 2 times the size of the bottom text below the bottom chuck. About 1 times the size of the middle text above that text, and the size of the middle text extended above the top title text. It's a clean line, and very obvious when viewed under these circumstances. An obvious hoax. Of course this doesn't disprove the whole thing, but it totally debunks by far the best "evidence" that is available. Try it! It's kinda fun in a nerdy CSI kinda way... -BaumSquad