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Leslie H Pico (Ott)
Polybius
What if there is a video game that won't just hurt you.
It will kill you.
The story starts in 1981, where a few isolated arcades in Portland, Oregon received a mysterious game called "Polybius".
This game used logic puzzles and mazes which affected players giving them nausea, headaches and psychological damage. Despite this the game was popular. It took no money and at the end of the day reports of "Men in Black" would retrieve the data from the cabinets.
But is it True?
Most researchers don't seem to think so. There is a lack of first hand evidence and the stories did not appear for more than two decades after the game supposedly surfaced.
Its alleged creator, Ed Rotberg also claims to have had nothing to do with it or even heard of it.
The game has never been found, but there are recreations that can be found on the internet. No video has ever been shown of a functional machine and nothing more seems to exist besides a simple screen cap of the game's title screen.
It does not help the story that most people cannot agree on the genre of the game. There is a german arcade cabinet similar to Polybius named "Poly Play" that this may have originated from.
Steven Roach
Some people claim to have intimate knowledge of the source.
Steven Roach wrote an article in 2006 claiming to have had some involvement in Polybius. He said he worked for a small South American company that wanted to promote a new approach to computer graphics and so they came up with something thaw was innovative for the time. The game was later re-called due to the fact that it caused epileptic fits.
ALTHOUGH,
Urban legends are often inspired by true stories. There are news reports of two people who became ill in Portland in 1981 in the same arcade on the same day.
It is true that the United States Government has approached Atari in the past to develop video games such as a custom version of "Battlezone"
World Governments do increasingly use computer simulations for training purposes. As well as technologies like
Transcanial Direct Current Simulation or "TDCS".
Research shows these approaches can affect the human brain assisting in retention and cutting down on training time.
But psychological experimentation on the unwitting public certainly isn't beyond imagination.
So next time you are in an old arcade and see a black cabinet with the name "Polybius" on marquee, try it out, but be wary...
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By Hollapeño Pico
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