I'm just as guilty as the next guy of being a little too addicted to my phone.And yes, I've been known to download a game here or there to pass the time, especially on a long flight or whatever.Don't judge me.I mean, some of them are pretty cool.
Honestly, I keep playing the same one over and over.And it's wild when you think about what a long way cell phones have come since even I was a teenager playing that black and white snake game on my old Nokia.
But now that I'm a mom, I actually do think about things like screen time and if video games, especially the violent ones, can actually cause real damage.Though, apparently, that was a concern long before cell phones and computers.
Because arcade games scared the heck out of parents, too.And when you hear today's story, I think you'll understand one of the reasons why.In the 1980s, in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, this video game randomly appeared in some arcades.
It was called Polybius.Not only did kids get totally addicted to it, it supposedly caused things like amnesia, night terrors, even hallucinations.Some players also claimed that they were watched, followed, even kidnapped after playing it.
It led me to wonder, where did this game come from?Was it some government mind control experiment?Or was there something so supernatural to blame? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is So Supernatural.
So I've lived in and around Portland for many years.So when Ashley sent us this story, I was so in.There is a reason why the city's beloved motto is keep Portland weird.
And this weird story has spooky video games, early internet anonymity, and a little dash of 80s nostalgia.
Rasha, I'm so excited to get into this.The deeper we dove into the story, though, the wilder the case became.You'd think tracking down a mysterious old arcade game would be pretty straightforward.
So let me tell you, there's a lot of twists and turns. So hike up your leg warmers and turn up your Walkman.I'm Yvette Gentile.And I'm Rasha Pecoraro.
And today we're taking you back to the 80s as we dive into the story of Polybius, the killer arcade game.
Okay, let me set the scene.Your clock radio goes off, playing your favorite top song, Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield, of course.You pull on your acid-wash jeans and a big puffy windbreaker.
You zoom past your mom, waving goodbye as she shouts at you to put on a heavier jacket.It's October in Oregon, you'll catch your death out there.But you don't care. It's 1981 and you've got a very important date at the local arcade.
When you step through the door, it's like a feast for your senses.Lights flash from every direction.The smell of hot dogs and nacho cheese wafts from the snack bar.The ancient carpet sticks to your feet with every step.
Buzzers and bells chime along to pixelated characters fighting their way to the next level.It's the era of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and Space Invaders.You have a pocket full of quarters and zero responsibilities.
But something seems weird today.Whispers are traveling around the arcade.Finally, one kid tells you what's going on.Didn't you hear?There's a new killer game out there. This is the story that started swirling around Portland, Oregon in 1981.
In the world of arcade gaming, at least in the 1980s, there were two ways to guarantee legendary status.The first was getting that high score on the hottest new game.
People became so obsessed with etching their three-letter tag into the annals of arcade history.
They started doing some wild things just to beat the record, just like playing for 24 hours straight or pouring hundreds of dollars worth of quarters into a single machine. anything for those bragging rights at school on Monday.
Picture an arcade in the 1980s.It's probably really colorful, right?Arcade games are all about the bells and the whistles.Games like Galaga or Dig Dug are decorated with bright colors and flashing lights.
And although I moved to Portland in the late 90s, I have spent a little bit of time in colorful Portland arcades. But in 1981, a mysterious game starts showing up in arcades across the city.
Only this one is completely black with no markings on it at all and no name.
It seems like every kid in Portland knows a cousin or an older sister or a friend the next town over who's seen one of these sleek black machines or even played the unnamed game itself.
According to the stories floating around, players find that when you start the game, you control a little spaceship that flies in circles through various tunnels, avoiding obstacles and shooting enemies.
But the longer you play, the more surreal it gets. Players report strobing lights and flashing messages that disappear too fast to read.The game contains puzzles that shift and change as you try to solve them.
Random strings of numbers and blinding colors.And the weirdness doesn't stop when it's game over. Kids who've played the mysterious game say they leave with a headache or severe nausea.You could forget what you are or even what you're doing.
Later that night, you can't fall asleep.If you do manage to drift off to dreamland, you'll find yourself in a world of nightmares.
As the day goes on, you might feel paranoid like someone is watching you, or random flashes of words and images pop into your head, which you're sure are subliminal messages from the game.
Just like everybody has a story about playing it, everybody also has a theory of what the game's true purpose is. Some kids swear it was a test game, maybe even a prototype of Tempest, which was set to come out in October that year.
Tempest would go on to become one of the most popular arcade games ever and was known for being incredibly challenging.And others believe the unmarked game or cabinet, as the enthusiasts call them, has a more nefarious purpose.
They say that if you play the game, you won't leave the arcade the same person as when you started.Because of all of it, the flashing light, the strange numbers, and the subliminal messages are a potent form of mind control.
And if the game is messing with people's minds, there's gotta be someone behind it.But who?
The answer to that comes just a few weeks after reports of the game start swirling.Around the same time the mysterious black machines first arrive on the scene, strange unmarked cars begin showing up at the few arcades in Portland.
Teams of men and women in identical black suits spill out of the cars, enter the arcades, and make a beeline for the black cabinets.
In a business populated by kids in brightly colored polyester, the stiffs in their official-looking suits are particularly noticeable.So these guys then crack open the machines, but they aren't after quarters.
Instead, it looks like they're examining the literal guts of the game. Kids report seeing these men in black write down all kinds of figures, including data about who's playing the games.Then one day, the men in black return one final time.
They load the mysterious machines into unmarked vans and drive off into the dark.The nightmare-inducing machines are never seen again.
Now, while all of this sounds super spooky, it does seem a little odd.Mind Control, Men in Black, in Portland of all places, smells like a lost episode of Twin Peaks to me.
Which is probably why a lot of people say this unnamed, mind-controlling arcade game is just an urban legend. Something that spread kid to kid like a city-wide game of telephone.That is, until the story resurfaces on the internet in 1998.
Only this time, the game has a name.Polybius.And cold, hard proof that it actually exists.
In 1998, the legendary unnamed arcade game from the 1980s gets a new chapter.That year, a mysterious post appears on an arcade game forum called coinop.org.
So in the wild west days of the early internet, tons of forums are springing up around niche interest. coinop.org's mission is to catalog every arcade game ever made.
It's super common for a limited run or incredibly obscure games to be uploaded to the site.So at first, this entry doesn't raise any eyebrows.
Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of long lost games out there that are the holy grails for arcade enthusiasts.Like games that were only released in Japan or never made it past the prototype phase or even abandoned and turned into something else.
But to people who were kids in 1980s Portland, this entry starts to sound familiar.The poster claims he has a ROM file for a rare game, basically a copy of the old game that's playable on a computer.
The anonymous poster describes it as an abstract action game with puzzles.They claim this game was only released in a few arcades in Portland and that it caused amnesia and nightmares in kids who played it.Sound familiar?
I think I know where this is kind of going. But the poster goes on to say that the game was allegedly some kind of behavior modification program, either by the CIA or some other government agency.
Okay, so that definitely matches up with the stories of that unnamed game from the 80s, especially the part where men in black suits were showing up to the arcades opening up the black game consoles and collecting data on the players.
What's more, the poster adds a single screenshot he got from his ROM copy of the game, the title screen.It's all in black with big teal letters that spell out the word Polybius. And below that, a copyright that says 1981, Zenith Lotion, Inc.
After all these years, the unknown game that haunted Portland has a name and a manufacturing company.
Both pieces of information just take us deeper into the spooky video games lore.The title, Polybius, is the name of an ancient Greek historian and cryptographer, famous for both uncovering the truth and hiding it in complex codes.
But here's the problem.That post in 1998 is the only update for a good long while.Six years in fact.The original poster never updates the Polybius post.
He doesn't provide any more screenshots of the game and from what I can tell, no one can dig up any info about the game's manufacturer either.
A lot of arcade enthusiasts rightfully start to think the Koinot post is just another rumor like the ones that traveled kid to kid in the 80s.
Like, it's been over 20 years and there's no more hard evidence of this game existing other than a grainy image of a start screen.
That is until 2006 when a man named Steven Roach leaves a lengthy comment on the coin-op post claiming to be one of the game's original designers.
The story goes like this, Steven Roach claimed that he and some programmers based in what was Czechoslovakia at the time, created a company called Zeneslotion in 1978.Which matches the image of the title screen that was posted.Right.
And while their primary business was making computer parts like circuit boards, they started programming video games on the side.
So according to Roche, in 1980, a South American company, impressed by their work, hired them to create a coin-operated arcade game.This South American company threw tons of money at Roche and his buddies and gave them free reign to design the game.
Since ZenithLotion wanted to be a new leader in the arcade game industry, Stephen Roach and his co-workers decided to push the boundaries of what was possible in a video game.
They created sophisticated graphics and complex puzzles using cutting-edge technology. But during the testing phase, their South American investors raised some concerns.
Like the game was so addicting and they were worried people would play it for hours on end.They felt that staring at the graphic display for too long might lead to physical or even mental issues.But Steven and his colleagues pressed on.
They really thought they'd made something special and they wanted to give the world a chance to see it.So in 1981, they did a limited release of seven Polybius games in the United States.
Launch day came and Steven's team waited excitedly to hear how their rollout went.They wondered, would their dreams of revolutionizing the video game industry come true?Or would it crash and burn?
Just six days later, the whole thing skidded to a halt. Reports came in that a 13-year-old boy suffered from an epileptic seizure after playing Polybius.The investors' fears about the graphics had actually come true.
Steven had to act quickly to save his company's reputation.Rumors were already spreading that Polybius was a killer game and kids were daring their friends to try to survive playing it.
Zinus Lotion immediately removed the game cabinets from Portland Arcades and allegedly paid a settlement to the injured boy's family.According to Stephen, his company disbanded soon after.So that was the end of that.
In one fell swoop, Polybius was gone forever. Steven's post ends with saying the whole thing was one of his life's greatest regrets.He believed they made something that would have revolutionized gaming if given the chance.
But after just one incident, they had to let Polybius fade into obscurity.
So Steven's story actually kind of makes sense.First of all, it clearly explains the origin of the killer video game rumors.And not only that, but the Men in Black too.
I mean, it was probably Xenos Lotion's workers coming in and removing Polybius Games, which of course adds to the mystery.
If a game is there one day and gone the next, you're gonna talk about it, especially when it's taken in broad daylight by mysterious, official looking men and women in suits.
Then there's the fact that the entire company dissolved over this incident and recalled all the games.I mean, that could explain why it's been so hard to find any record of Polybius.If you accidentally made a game that caused seizures,
you would want to bury that story six feet deep.So with Stephen Roche's confession, the Polybius mystery is finally solved, right?
Well, Stephen Roche's comment conveniently explains every aspect of the Polybius legend.
It's a little too convenient, isn't it?
Exactly.And on top of that, it doesn't really read like something a brilliant computer programmer would write, even one whose first language may be Czech.
The whole thing is a big block of text full of weird grammar, American slang, and informal language.Stephen spells the name of Zinus Lotion, his own company, two different ways.
And there's the issue that Zenoslotion never seemed to be registered with the Czechoslovakian government.Not only that, the country was communist at the time and almost certainly not able to do business with people from another country.
If the company really did exist, it was not doing legitimate business.In his rambling comment, Stephen also claims the name Polybius came from his colleague, Malrek Vacecek,
Marek apparently studied Greek mythology at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.But the thing is, there's no record of Marek Butiuszek ever enrolling at Masaryk University.And the final issue with Stephen Roach's whole story?
After making the comment on Koinob, Stephen Roach was interviewed by a gaming journal called Game Pulse UK.In it, he claims a German citizen named Ulrich Kohler came up with the company's name.Okay, so what's weird about that?
Well, the name doesn't really make sense.It's a mashup of two words. Zinus, which means clear, like delete, and Laschen, which means sense.So the name means something like clear sense or delete sense.
Some people think it may even stand for brainwash, but the way it's written, it's super strange for a native German speaker.Rather than delete sense, it literally translates closer to sense away remove, which let's be frank, sounds pretty odd.
I mean, look, you know me in grammar, so maybe his German friend failed grammar.It's just... True, true, true.We don't know.
It could be, but it's more likely that a non-native German speaker made up the name, which tracks when you notice one other tiny detail.The German friend Ulrich Kohler, he has the same last name as Kurt Kohler.And who's Kurt Kohler?
The owner of coinop.org. Once that comes out, you start to wonder whether the whole thing is just made up by Kurt Kohler to drive traffic to his website.
So there's a lot of things that point to Stephen Roach's Polybius story as fake.But tons of people in the Portland arcade scene remember the game being around and then mysteriously removed by Men in Black.
That's because that really did happen.In 1981, the men in black showed up in Portland arcades.And this is where things get really interesting. So Stephen Roach's story about creating Polybius, probably too good to be true.
And a great reminder of the early days of internet safety.
That's right.So remember kids, you never know who you're talking to online.And what they might be lying about. Even the moderators on coinop.org weigh in on the story, claiming it's all a tall tale.
I mean, they write, and this is a quote, we just wanted to go on record here that Stephen Roach is full of himself and knows nothing about this game.And we have it on good authority.
This same moderator post also mentions that they're writing their messages on May 16th, 2009, and they've received more information about the game and are flying to Kiev, Ukraine to check it out, which seems like a pretty expensive trip for an internet forum moderator just to find out the truth behind a random post on their website.
Unfortunately for us, the post never gets another update.
All of this renewed attention around the game did lead to an increase in Polybius discussions online.
Which meant suddenly more and more former arcade teams came forward claiming they remembered hearing about Polybius, seeing Polybius, and even playing Polybius.
They also claim to remember the side effects of the game.Kids fainting, having seizures, having nightmares, amnesia, I mean the works.And when we dug a little deeper, we found something surprising.
All of these side effects kids claim from playing arcade games, they really did happen.
Throughout the 80s, several kids got hurt from playing an arcade game, and some of them even originated from the ground zero of the Polybius story in Portland, Oregon.
And that brings us to November 27th, 1981.That's when 12-year-old Brian Morrow enters the Malibu Grand Prix Arcade in Portland, ready to make history.
At this time, the world record high score for the game Asteroids is 30.1 million points, a feat that took the player who did it over 52 hours. Brian Morrow is going to beat that score in just 48 hours.
Brian starts the marathon strong, wearing a tuxedo and specially made wrist braces as he starts smashing space rocks.But 28 hours into the game, something goes wrong.Brian begins complaining of abdominal cramps and serious stomach issues.
Ultimately, he has to tap out at just 14 million points, not even halfway to the record.Some spectators wondered whether staring at the asteroid screen for so long did Brian Morrow in, but the truth was much simpler.
Not wanting to distract himself with eating, Brian spent the whole 28 hours consuming only two things, orange juice and Coca-Cola.When the inevitable tummy troubles started, he had to call it quits.
While Brian Murrow's sugar-induced sickness is certainly debilitating, another emergency quickly takes center stage.That same day, in the same arcade, a different gamer gets seriously ill.
Around the same time Brian Murrow went for the Asteroids record, 14-year-old Michael Lopez was trying to beat his friend's high score on the Atari game, Tempest.
If that name rings a bell, that's because it's the game that many people claim Polybius was similar to.As Michael tells it, he's mid-game while all of a sudden a headache starts in the back of his head.
And just as quickly, his vision blinks in and out with flashing lights appearing before his eyes. Michael stumbles to the parking lot where the pain in his head becomes so intense it makes him vomit.
And one of his friends tries to walk him home, but Michael loses control of his limbs and collapses on someone's front lawn, writhing in pain.
So people are wondering, was the game to blame or was there something sinister lurking in the graphics that triggered Michael's illness?
Well, yes, there was something up with the graphics, but it's not what you think. The day Michael Lopez played the mysterious game, he had his first ever migraine.
Now, migraines can have a lot of causes, from stress and hormones to strong smells and bright lights.Arcades, of course, are filled with scents of fast food and teenage BO, if I'm being honest, and have constantly flashing lights in every color.
So maybe that's the perfect place to trigger a migraine. As Michael grew into adulthood, the migraines would become a more frequent occurrence.And as anyone who suffers from migraines can tell you, they're absolutely miserable.
But they're also a perfectly normal, if not incredibly painful, neurological issue.
You know, I've never had a migraine, but I have had friends that have had them and they go down for days, like days at a time because of this.So, you know, it's super serious.But try telling that to excitable high schoolers.
I mean, by the time Michael's well enough to return to school a few days later, it's too late to stop the rumors. The word on the street is that the game tried to take over his mind.
And that rumor only gains momentum when the next big arcade game story hits the papers.This one happened in 1982, and y'all, it's a doozy.
That year, an 18-year-old boy named Peter Burkowski enters an arcade in a shopping center in Calumet City, Illinois.At one point that afternoon, Peter makes his way over to a game called Berserk.
Now in Berserk, you play a little green pixelated man running around a blue maze shooting aliens, I think, or robots, robo aliens, I can't remember.
Regardless, Peter is killing it at Berserk.He's racing through the levels, he's ripping through the bad guys and racking up the points.Finally, he gets what he wants, a high score.But just as Peter starts to celebrate, disaster hits.
A massive, sharp pain blooms in his chest and, just like that, Peter collapses to the ground.By the time the paramedics get there, He's gone.I mean, he is dead of a massive heart attack at 18 years old.
Now rumors swirl about how Berserk is literally a killer game.But the truth lies not in the game circuits, but in Peter's chest.It turns out poor Peter had a heart condition and just a little bit too much stress could trigger a heart attack.
Stress like getting too excited when he got a high score. So right around the time the Polybius myth got started, you have several high-profile stories of kids getting sick from arcade games and one kid even dying.
Now it is possible there was a killer game that controlled people's minds out there in a mysterious black cabinet.But what seems more likely is that these stories of kids getting hurt by games became conflated with the mind control rumor.
So where did the Men in Black come in?
Okay, let's get into that.If you spent any time on the UFO cover-up side of the internet, you've heard of the phenomenon of the Men in Black.Y'all know I am all into the Men in Black.We can go back to episode five, right, Raj?
The Oakville Blobs, when Sonny Barcliffe encounters the Men in Black.I'm just saying. As the rumors go, these mysterious, official-looking people in dark suits have been known to show up in the aftermath of UFO sightings or other paranormal events.
Their existence has been noted as early as 1947, when a man named Harold Dahl spotted six flying saucers out by Maury Island in Puget Sound, Washington.
Soon after, Dahl claimed a mysterious man in a black suit took him to a local diner, where he questioned Dahl about the incident.
The man allegedly told Dahl to keep quiet about the whole thing, both the flying saucers and the man in the black suit, or something terrible would happen.
Dahl later claimed that the UFO sighting and the visit by the man in black was made up, but that didn't stop other reports from rolling in.
More and more ufologists, both amateur and official, reported that after witnessing something, possibly alien, mysterious men in black suits would come to question and threaten them.
Some of these guys were probably just from the government, like the Air Force, or the FBI, or military intelligence.But in other encounters, people claimed these men in black weren't exactly human.
Like they floated off the ground, had strange hairless faces, even glowing eyes.Majorly creepy vibes. So when stories about men in black showing up in the arcades start circulating, a lot of people jumped straight to UFOs.
If these guys have been seen almost exclusively after supernatural occurrences, then something spooky must have been going on at the Portland arcades.Like say, a game that controls your mind.
Only the reality is somehow even stranger.Because yes, there were mysterious men and women in black suits raiding Pacific Northwest arcades in 1981.But they weren't there to investigate X-Files.They were from the FBI's Vice Squad.
See, some arcade operators in the early 80s realized there was more money to be made from arcade games than just quarters. There were classic casino games in some of these arcades, like poker and blackjack simulators.
They were supposed to only play them for points and not cash.But with those games, some unscrupulous arcade owners saw an opportunity.And betting on who had the top spot on popular games could be very lucrative.
So these arcade owners started running gambling rings out of their back rooms.When the FBI caught on, they started surveilling crooked arcades.Oftentimes they'd show up and inspect the machines, recording data like the names of high score players.
But this wasn't some nefarious mind-control plot.It was so that they could track down witnesses to any illegal gambling.In at least one arcade, the FBI even planted video and audio recording devices inside popular games to capture illegal activity.
One of these games was Tempest. But this wasn't because Tempus had any special mind-control properties or made people sick.It was because of its external design.Hazy glass surrounded the video screen, so it was perfect for hiding a camera lens.
Okay, I think I see what's going on here. Kids are seeing people in official looking black suits coming into the arcades where they look super out of place.
And these so-called men in black are opening up video game cabinets and they're tinkering with the insides and sometimes even taking down information.And they're carting off the games to fit them with cameras and microphones to collect evidence.
In some arcades, games like Tempest are here one day and gone the next.
You got it, exactly.Now pretend you're a gamer in Portland at this time.Maybe you witness government agents coming in and fiddling with the machines.
At the same time, stories are going around school about games that cause headaches, vomiting, even mind control.
And those are the good side effects, because as we know, some even kill you.
So you take some real life men in black types, throw in some mind control fears and sudden illness, add a splash of paranoia and a game of telephone, then you let it marinate for 45 years, and then you're going to add in just a dash of internet anonymity.
You've got an urban legend.
The deeper we look into this story, I'll admit, the more the facts don't quite add up. But you know what?Maybe that's the fun of the whole thing.
Remember being a kid and debating with your sister or your friends whether Bigfoot really stopped the woods or not?
I think you scared me with that story once or twice.So yes, I do believe Bigfoot is real, but that's a story for another day.And if you haven't heard Ashley's episode on Bigfoot, now might just be the time to go back and listen.It's so, so good.
The Polybius legend feels a lot like that, but some part of me feels like even the name of the game, Polybius, is playing into that story.
Huh.What makes you say that?
So, Polybius, listen to this, was an ancient Greek historian and cryptographer, right?Right.And as a historian, a huge part of his work centered on the truth, specifically how to determine it.
And in the ancient world, fact-checking somebody's statement wasn't as easy as pulling up a Snopes page, since so few people were literate.I mean, there weren't many written accounts of historical events.
And like all reporting, the few written accounts that existed were probably biased. So Polybius emphasized that historians should never take one source as fact.
They should try to verify what's stated by seeking out other sources, especially through interviewing eyewitnesses.I know this may sound like common sense, but it's a pretty radical concept for the time.
So much so that over 2,000 years later, that's what we remember about Polybius.
My point being, maybe Polybius, the historian, the arcade kids of Portland, and my favorite fictional agent Fox Mulder, hello from the X-Files, all have something in common.They all want to know that the truth is out there.
This is So Supernatural, an Audio Chuck original produced by Crime House.You can connect with us on Instagram at sosupernaturalpod and visit our website, sosupernaturalpodcast.com.Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all new episode.
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