Polybius Game Urban Legend Resurfaces 81
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?
10 minutes on Google Groups (Score:5, Insightful)
So where is it??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where's the ROM? Or, if there's the ROM, how do you emulate it? (You just don't plug it in MAME...) And even if you have the ROM, where's the damn hardware? It's been a while since year 1981 - anyone can make a ROM of a game, call it "Polybius" and make people think that's the real mind-erasing game thing. And it'll be even more convenient if the game won't work in emulator...
No, we need more solid evidence than vague reports. Specifically, hardware specs, full history, ROMs, whatever - but not rumors.
And if you have rumors, at least make them believeable, coherent and verifiable (not "my brother's wife's aunt's roommate's son played it once").
I could tell you of games that were extraordinary to say the least, and one clearly could not believe they have actually existed unless you saw them with your very eyes. But at least if I type their names to Google I can find them pretty fast and they run in emulator. (Try "Army Moves" - the %#@&*ng jeep jumps, can you believe that? - and "Painterboy" - a noble predecessor to Grand Theft Auto, except that you paint houses instead of kill people. Both for Commodore 64. =)
A vague recollection... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Backwater? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A vague recollection... (Score:3, Insightful)
I seem to recall learning in school about Ptolemy doing experiments with a spinning spoked wheel and sunlight. He demonstrated the effect where at certain speeds the spokes appear to stop or rotate backwards and also the hallucination of color when the wheels were only black and white.
Somewhere I have a flexi-single that came with an audiophile magazine that demonstrated a psycho-acoustic hallucination. You needed headphones to get the full effect. It would alternate high and low tones between your ears in various patterns, but your brain would perceive it as a different pattern. I believe it was based on this [ucsd.edu] research [ucsd.edu].
Auditory and visual hallucinations are known to occur to people in situations of acute sensory deprivation (like dark neutral bouyancy tanks).
In each of these cases, no "exceptional chemical circumstances" were involved.
Re:correctly (Score:2, Insightful)
Snopes doesn't really go into it true but it doesn't take a hell of a lot of investigation to call this out as bogus.
First, search around the internet and there is a certain monotony to "reports" of this game. For the most part it is clearly the repetition of some blurb someone wrote that has just gotten pasted hither and yon. There is no supporting evidence, no credible, attributed first-hand accounts. Just like a hoax: a simplistic, monolithic data source makes for a singular, monotonous presence on the 'net.
Next, the supposed ROM. The only evidence that exists of this is a screen shot that could obviously easily be faked. It's said it hangs up on the title page - how convenient. Where's the file? Who found the ROM? Where did it come from? Who's got it now? Easy enough to fake up a title page that's just a typical 80's bubble font - not even any graphics or new information, just the "game" and "company" information that already existed in the story. Most believable explanation? A lazy hoaxer just propping up a tired rumor.
Finally, the whole premise is just dumb. Video games cause amnesia and nightmares? How? Magic science, of course. Secret Military hoodoo. And like the military doesn't have an unlimited supply of seventeen and eighteen-year-olds in the enlisted ranks and guards that they could experiment on to their hearts' content. No, they'll cart experimental equipment out to the boondocks of Oregon to test teenage slackers... uh, to what end again? To collect data... on what? High scores? Giving random punks amnesia and nightmares - I'm sure it's tops on the CIA's to-do list. In fact, who exactly collected this information about kids losing their memories and waking up screaming? If someone, somewhere, legitimately discovered and demonstrated a trend, where is that person? Anyway the idea of video-game mind control is such a chestnut cliche that Harlan Ellison actually mocks it as such in the short story "The Hour that Stretches."
In short, Slashdot's proof is Snopes' proof is my proof is as good as proof that something doesn't exist gets - if there's no supporting evidence and the premise is implausible, it's as certain as it needs to be that it's just BS.
Where is the evidence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that how urban legends spread? By a bunch of people repeating what they think is true without referencing any authoritative sources?