Patten: The video game that brainwashes you - East Idaho News
News

Patten: The video game that brainwashes you

  Published at  | Updated at

“Polybius,” an arcade game supposedly released in 1981, is my favorite urban legend. It involves mind control, a mysterious company, men in black and screaming children.

It’s the most intriguing video game that (most likely) never existed. Here’s the root of the story as it appeared on a post authored by an anonymous person on coinop.org:

This game had a very limited release, one or two backwater arcades in a suburb of Portland. The history of this game is cloudy, there were all kinds of strange stories about how kids who played it got amnesia afterwards, couldn’t remember their name or where they lived, etc.

The bizarre rumors about this game are that it was supposedly developed by some kind of weird military tech offshoot group, used some kind of proprietary behavior modification algorithms developed for the CIA or something, and kids who played it woke up at night screaming, having horrible nightmares.

According to an operator who ran an arcade with one of these games, guys in black coats would come to collect “records” from the machines. They’re not interested in quarters or anything, they just collected information about how the game was played.

The game was weird looking, kind of abstract, fast action with some puzzle elements, the kids who played it stopped playing games entirely, one of them became a big anti-video game crusader or something. We’ve contacted one person who met him, and he claims the machines disappeared after a month or so, and no one ever heard about them again.

Until the ROM showed up.

Here’s what we’ve found so far:

Found English strings “insert coin” and “press 1 player start” and “only” – looks like a 1 or 2 player game.

Text in the game says “(C) 1981 Sinneslöschen.” Maybe a German company?

If anyone has heard any additional information about this game, we’d appreciate hearing about it.

(A ROM is basically like a disk image. You can use ROMs to play old arcade games on your computer using emulators like MAME. A string is a group of letters, numbers or special characters.)

‘Polybius’ is everywhere

That post got the snowball of shadows rolling. Nearly 20 years later (or, if you believe the legend, 35 years later), the Internet still talks about the mind-control device masquerading as a harmless video game.

People have even made re-creations of “Polybius,” such as this one.

“Polybius” has left its mark on popular culture, making cameo appearances in shows like “The Goldbergs”:

and “The Simpsons”:

It has left its mark on popular culture, making cameo appearances in shows like “The Goldbergs” and “The Simpsons.”

‘Polybius’ is false

Here’s the thing: No one has ever posted the actual ROM of the game, although some people claim to have it. Suspicious yet?

And, as a Den of Geek writer points out:

So, according to legend, the game is very popular on location, and has people lining up to play. If that’s the case, where is the myriad of former “Polybius” players, waiting to debunk my theory that the game doesn’t exist?

‘Polybius’ is true(ish)

The “Polybius” legend, while most likely bogus, has its roots in the truth, according research by skeptic podcaster Brian Dunning:

  • In the 1980s, people were being affected by photosensitive epilepsy triggered by video games.
  • Government agents were investigating arcades in the Portland region during this time period. Some operators were using the video games for gambling purposes by installing illegal counters in the back of the machines.
  • Arcades were a popular place to sell stolen goods and drugs, and authorities set up at least one fake arcade in Portland equipped with cameras to catch the criminals.
  • The U.S. government was using commercial video games for training purposes, such as the tank simulator game “Battlezone.”

“How much more raw material was needed for teenagers to see a pattern?” Dunning writes. “Games were physically harming players, giving them headaches and nausea; and government agents actually were lurking in every arcade shadow. The ‘Polybius’ urban legend was hardly fiction; it was nearly a docudrama.”

All hail ‘Polybius’

The “Polybius” story meets the criteria of a good urban legend:

  • It could affect a lot of people. How many were brainwashed by “Polybius”? Decades later, are people still suffering the mind-numbing effects?
  • It has a moral. Video games will rot your brain. You don’t want to end up like those poor kids in Portland, do you?
  • It plays on our fears. The government is out to get you.
  • It’s an indicator of current events and attitudes. Urban legends are like any other story – if you want to know how a society feels, listen to what people are telling each other. In this case, video games are still a relatively young medium, and no one knows what experiences they have in store for us.
  • It’s fun! “Polybius” is a good mystery. A video game with a dark secret has now vanished. Men in black lurk in arcades. Children scream. Who wouldn’t want to know more?

For a mind-control game that never existed, “Polybius” does a great job of messing with people’s heads. In fact, the “Polybius” story is so powerful that even though I know the legend isn’t true, I still have a desire to play the game – or at least watch someone else play it. That’s pretty twisted.

I, for one, welcome our new video game overlords.

You can follow Robert Patten on Facebook and Twitter.

SUBMIT A CORRECTION