The Creepiest Video Game Mystery of All Time
The Creepiest Video Game Mystery of All Time
Top 20 Greatest Video Game Endings of All Time
Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at the creepiest video game mystery of all time. Would you dare to play this game? It is said that in 1981, a small gaming company by the name of Sinneslöschen, German for “sensory deprivation”, released a strange arcade cabinet called “Polybius”. Rumor has it that the cabinets were found in and around Portland, Oregon, and caused extreme and unusual side-effects in anybody who played the game. Players suffered seizures, insomnia, and nightmares among other symptoms. Cabinets were quietly removed from the area among stories that “men in black” had been sighted outside arcades, perhaps even downloading data from the machines. “Polybius” became an urban legend and despite decades of searching and speculation, no ROMs or credible eyewitness stories have surfaced. A major source of information on “Polybius” is one humble JPEG image of the game’s supposed title screen. On it, you can see the game’s logo, the year it was released, and the developers who created it, which is where the 1981 release year and “Sinneslöschen” come from. But stories about “Polybius” didn’t emerge until the 2000s, 20 years after the game was supposedly installed across Portland, on coinop.org. The original page on coinop, as well as the first printed feature about the game - a 2003 article in GamePro magazine - propelled the story into gaming history. Since then, people have been searching for truth within the myth. The two biggest parts of the “Polybius” legend are the game’s psychological effects and the involvement of “men in black”, speculated to be FBI or CIA. In the decades since video games became mainstream, a lot of media attention has been on whether they’re bad for kids – and there have been real instances of people getting ill or even dying while gaming, with notable events happening in Portland arcades in 1981. One boy, Brian Mauro, collapsed with stomach pain after playing “Asteroids” non-stop for 28 hours aiming to beat the world record of over 30 million points in a single game – though remarkably, the original record-setter took 52 hours getting there. Mauro was only 12 when this happened. The very same day in the same arcade, another boy, Michael Lopez, suffered a severe migraine playing “Tempest”. And while it’s common knowledge now that video games can induce epileptic seizures due to their bright, flashing lights, in the early 80s video games were still incredibly new. In fact, games didn’t carry seizure warnings until the 90s, with the first lawsuit being filed against Nintendo in 1991 after a woman in Michigan had a seizure playing “Kid Icarus”. Seizures aren’t the only real-life threat players have to contend with, either; in recent years, video game addiction has received a lot of attention. Some people who have developed such addictions have damaging complications, like anxiety, sleeplessness, and depression – all symptoms also reported by people claiming to have played “Polybius”. So, if “Polybius” did exist, it’s highly plausible that it could have had debilitating effects on players – and if it didn’t, plenty of other games have done the same thing. But what about those men in black? Well, it’s true that shady government agents may have been lurking outside arcades in the 80s, because they were believed to be dens of gambling and drug abuse. Arcades even became a battleground to get kids off drugs throughout the 90s, when the “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” campaign was launched and anti-drugs messages were put into certain arcade cabinets – and these messages were written by the FBI director at the time. As for the CIA, people have speculated that “Polybius” may be to do with Project MKUltra, the CIA’s clandestine mind-control project that existed from the 50s to the 70s. MKUltra did exist and carried out experiments into mind-altering drugs and sensory deprivation – just like “Polybius’s” supposed development company’s name. The theory suggests “Polybius” was another way to try and take over someone’s mind. There is also the idea that it may have been used as a soldier recruitment tool. This, too, has some basis in real-world events; the NSA has recruited hackers to its ranks in a similar way – maybe they were the secret agents mining data from Portland’s cabinets? But though the story is clearly drawing from many different real-world events, it still may be just that: a story. Nobody has ever found any ROMs for “Polybius”, no original cabinets exist – though plenty of mock-ups have been made by dedicated fans – and no eyewitness accounts can be verified. One popular account of the game comes from an alleged developer, Steven Roach, who says he worked on the game and founded the company “Sinneslöschen”. But internet sleuths have never found anything that makes it seem like Roach is a real person beyond his forum posts. Another big nail in the coffin of the legend is the company’s name. It’s a fake compound word that wouldn’t make sense to anybody who can speak German and translates better to “sense delete” rather than “sensory deprivation”. It’s like somebody with no grasp of German found two words in a dictionary and stuck them together. And finally, no reference to “Polybius” the machine exists before the post on coinop in 2000, all previous references before this are to the Ancient Greek philosopher of the same name. Even more damning is the fact that the 2003 GamePro article that brought the story to the masses was given to the article’s writer by a man named Kurt Koller. Koller is also the owner of coinop and likely came up with that original entry on the site - along with the title screen image. Did Koller, an arcade cabinet aficionado, invent the story of “Polybius” as a way to push traffic to his website? Many believe this is the case. But does that mean “Polybius” doesn’t exist? Video games have surfaced over the years called “Polybius” made in the spirit of the game, drawing inspiration from the stories. One was released for the PSVR in 2017, while another, more popular version made by Rogue Synapse has found its way into those fan-made “Polybius” cabinets. The Rogue Synapse game is just as creepy as you’d imagine the real “Polybius” would be, with unsettling visuals, sinister sound-effects, and subliminal messages. It’s more likely that “Polybius” never existed and was probably born from genuine stories of people playing at arcade cabinets until they got sick. But with so many kernels of truth buried in the legend, is it possible that the “Polybius” mystery has yet to be solved?
