The Origin of the Polybius Hoax

kiwasabi

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I grew up in Portland, OR in the 90's and never heard anything about a mysterious arcade game that gave kids nightmares, caused seizures or anything like that. While Polybius is a fun myth, I've always known it to be BS created within the last 10 years or so. So when a few days ago a prankster posted a craigslist ad for a Polybius machine in PA, I had had enough. I decided to find the first mention of the Polybius myth on the internet, and hopefully the origin of the hoax.

Luckily a user at the MAMEWorld forums named Stiletto had the info I was looking for. The first ever mention of an arcade game called Polybius was on 2/27/00:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/AZGVIvoYwCA

"No, not the Greek historian. An arcade game.

I am skeptical of the claims made on the following page, but they certainly
make for interesting reading."

(Archive of the first website containing the Polybius myth)
http://web.archive.org/web/20000303224844/http://www.clickto.com/coinop/GamePage/Polybius.html

I contacted this guy to find out if he put the info up. It turns out he was just the first person to stumble upon it. Himself being a video game historian, he referred to such myths as a "menace" saying, "I don't think anything good comes from trying to pass off false information as true". I went on to the next lead.

One year later, a guy named Al accused a user named Cyberyogi of the hoax:

"Would someone please shoot this story in the head? It was put there by net kook 'CYBERYOGI' who was also responsible for an annoying April Fools prank last year."

It turns out Cyberyogi came up with an elaborate April Fools prank also in 2000 saying that, " SENSATION:"Phoenix" arcade game version from GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC found!!! [ROMs are intact!]".

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rec.games.video.arcade.collecting/NBRiwPOjjzQ

I contacted Cyberyogi asking him if he started the hoax, also stating I may be interested in joining his "first cyber-age religion" called LOGOLOGIE. So far, no response

http://weltenschule.de/e_index.html

But given that Cyberyogi had concocted another elaborate prank the same year, it seems safe to say he's behind it. He's German, and sinnesloschen is German for "senseless" or "loss of consciousness". Some also think the name Polybius was inspired by one of the few German games in the 80's called Poly Play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play

Sorry for such a long post, but I hope that this is good enough evidence and closure for everyone that Polybius has a 99.9% chance of being a hoax created in early 2000.
 
As far as I know, no one has ever found any hard evidence connecting Cyberyogi to Polybius (Duane Weatherall didn't).

The first mention of the legend supposedly occured around 1994 on usenet.

Actually, a VERY interesting arcticle by Catherine DeSpira on Polybius was published in the Spring 2012 issue of RetroCade with a theory about the origins of the legend that has never been published anywhere else:

http://stoneagegamer.com/retrocademagazine2digital.aspx

The whole article may be a hoax (always a possibility where Polybius is concerned)
but if it isn't it is far and away the definitive article on the whole story and has tons of information that I have NEVER seen anywhere else. DeSpira did lots of research (again, assuming her article is legit) and uncovered some facts that have gone undiscovered for 30 years.


Among the many fascinating facts/theories in the 8-page Retrocade article:

* A proposed origin of the legend, which to me is far more interesting than the theories abut an April Fool's hoax. I don't want to go into too much detail (you can buy the magazine for less than $2) but the author of the article claims that the whole thing is a conflation and exaggeration of several actual incidents that occured in the Beaverton, Oregon area in 1981. A player did get sick after playing a game, Tempest was involved, and there was an FBI sting operation in Seattle that DeSpira speculates was the source of the "men in black" reports.
* The true, and very disturbing, story of Steven Roach (you have to read this to believe it - and I'm still not sure I do).

The article is old enough now that I may do a post about it.
 
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As far as I know, no one has ever found any hard evidence connecting Cyberyogi to Polybius (Duane Weatherall didn't).

No, it's certainly all anecdotal. But to me it does make sense that he would be behind it. And of course he would never admit to being behind such a hoax after it has created such a cult following.

The first mention of the legend supposedly occured around 1994 on usenet.

I may get in touch with her about that claim. I find it hard to believe. I was living in Portland at that time and the only legend I ever heard was if you said "Bloody Mary" in the school bathroom 3 times she would appear. My friends would've eaten up the Polybius legend.

The whole article may be a hoax (always a possibility where Polybius is concerned)
but if it isn't it is far and away the definitive article on the whole story and has tons of information that I have NEVER seen anywhere else. DeSpira did lots of research (again, assuming her article is legit) and uncovered some facts that have gone undiscovered for 30 years.

After reading it I'm convinced it's legitimate. The claims she made about Steven Roach and his wife would be some major libel if untrue.

the author of the article claims that the whole thing is a conflation and exaggeration of several actual incidents that occured in the Beaverton, Oregon area in 1981. A player did get sick after playing a game, Tempest was involved, and there was an FBI sting operation in Seattle that DeSpira speculates was the source of the "men in black" reports.

I had never heard about the sting operations. Arcade games being rigged up to give out money instead of points? I do find that hard to believe. That and arcades being used to sell stolen merchandise. Again, it would probably be worth getting in touch with Catherine to verify her sources.
 
Ah, I have fans!

Yeah, so here's a method to shoot the Polybius rumor in the head, which you guys seem to have ignored from the 2011 thread on the matter at MAMEWorld.info:
http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=270410&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1

Now, I hate bringing attention to this... odd person, but specifically this:
"Sinneslöschen" / "Sinnesloeschen" is the name of the company that supposedly created the game.
We have heard definitions of this word as "sense delete", "sense deletion", "sensory erasure".

... Could it also be "senseless"?

In German, Google Translate says "sinnlos", with a reverse translation as "meaningless" as well.
What is "CYBERYOGI", again - other than an Internet prankster and "netizen"?
Supposedly, founder of "Logologie" - "the first cyber-age religion, Its main subjects include the entire abandonation of brutality and of senseless brain destruction."

Senseless.

http://weltenschule.de/Logologie/e_index.html
Let's look at that in German: http://weltenschule.de/Logologie/index.html

"Sinnlosen".

I wonder if he ever expected it'd take on a life of its own...
Great thing about a "made up word" like "Sinneslöschen", makes it easy to Google and track for laughs...

Most places that pick apart the rumor tend to ignore this side of it, focusing on the conspiracy theory aspect, the hallucinatory/medical effects, the men in black. Can I say things vaguely like this didn't happen? No of course I can't...

What you need to focus on is that the game listing on coinop.org (or click.to/coinop as it was then) went up, in its earliest days, with a mfg. name of "Sinneslöschen". Can we say the game name and/or company name are fictitious? YES. Why "Polybius"? Well, this prankster seems knowledgeable regarding history and philosophy, so it seems the sort of name he might pick. I'm sure he had reasons... logical reasons, I cannot tell you.

Ergo, we know who the prankster was. QED. We've known since Al's post on the matter, and suspected it for some time. We've always known, really.

Going by this interpretation, BTW, means that the "it was actually Poly-Play" rumor was also wrong. I'd have to go back in time to see when all the Poly-Play preservation work was done but I'm pretty sure it was also around March-April 2000, meaning that it inspired our German prankster.

BTW, I'm more than a user on MAMEWorld forums: I've done research for the MAME project off and on since 1999-2000 and am officially part of the development team.
 
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No, it's certainly all anecdotal. But to me it does make sense that he would be behind it. And of course he would never admit to being behind such a hoax after it has created such a cult following.







I may get in touch with her about that claim. I find it hard to believe. I was living in Portland at that time and the only legend I ever heard was if you said "Bloody Mary" in the school bathroom 3 times she would appear. My friends would've eaten up the Polybius legend.







After reading it I'm convinced it's legitimate. The claims she made about Steven Roach and his wife would be some major libel if untrue.







I had never heard about the sting operations. Arcade games being rigged up to give out money instead of points? I do find that hard to believe. That and arcades being used to sell stolen merchandise. Again, it would probably be worth getting in touch with Catherine to verify her sources.


Apparently it's possible for arcade cabinets to be rigged with illegal games at least. So I wouldn't put one being rigged to spit out money as out of place. One of my friends in France told me in the early 80's there were these illegal game parlors, where they would run illegal gambling games of some sort on arcade cabinets. When the authorities would come in or regular patrons or whatever they would flip a switch on the game and it would go back to a regular arcade game. Eventually these illegal machines were seized by the government and this resulted in a lot of arcade games being destroyed and/or banned from the public. I don't know any more details on the subject and again this only went down in France.
 
* The true, and very disturbing, story of Steven Roach (you have to read this to believe it - and I'm still not sure I do).

Adding to Stiletto's comments: anyone wondering if Polybius is a hoax or not (spoiler: it is) really should read the Steven Roach interview from back in 2006.

Also, the confusion in the Polybius myth with Poly-Play (the East German arcade game that does exist) likely comes down to two factors:

- Both start with 'Poly'
- Cyberyogi's April Fool's hoax with the faked East German version of Phoenix. Note that he admits to the Phoenix hoax in that link.

Summary: it's a fake, always has been, and we know who is responsible for it. What's entertaining is watching other people try to convince the world that it was real.
 
Dammit!! Where is my tin-foil hat!!! The secret police are monitoring me again.

I know they are...WHY WON'T ANYONE BELIEVE ME!?!?!?....you fools..........
 
I haven't been on KLOV in a very long time, so I missed Stiletto's comment up until now. Which is a shame, because it seems he/she is the person who originally pinned this internet hoax on Cyber Yogi. I find it interesting that he/she said in another thread:

"I would totally help with the database if I had access, I think it's a shame that it remains in the state it's in and I've actually had a hand in helping competing website databases for years - it's about time I helped this one. I'm pretty lousy with Photoshop but give me a database to edit and complete, and I'm a happy camper. "

This says to me that this Stiletto person should have been able to see who made the original entry on Polybius on http://www.clickto.com/coinop/GamePage/Polybius.html since I would presume there were not many MAME databases back in 1999-2000, and any that existed, he/she probably helped develop. So I kind of wonder if maybe Cyber Yogi's prank actually inspired some cheeky MAME devs to do their own prank, and then blame it on him? Cyber Yogi of course denies responsibility, this was his (long winded) response to my inquiry back in 2013. This all but confirmed to me that he had done it, based solely on how ridiculously far he had thought this whole idea through. But Stiletto's comments have an air of wanting to fuel the flames of the myth a bit, and that he/she knows more than he/she is letting on. Which is it, Stiletto? It can be KLOV's little secret.


"No, I didn't make Polybius, otherwise the Men In Black would now go after me.

By the way, the "Polybius" title logo screenshot shown on various sites is definitely not taken from the real thing, because it is showing a
raster game screen and you can not do such things on a raster monitor. Only
vector monitors are capable to sync the flicker frequency of individual
displayed objects precisely enough to the players brain wave frequencies to
enable synchronous data transfer to the player's mind. And even this needs very
sophisticated programming and I see no easy way how to hide such a neuronomical
aparatus in the environment of a normal arcade video game machine, because to
stay in sync with the players brain it would under normal conditions need an EEG
biofeedback device (i.e. head electrodes) and likely also an eye tracker to
place optical subliminal messages exactly in the players view focus.

However it is plausible that with skilful programming the properties of a zoner
game can be employed to circumvent some of these needs, but the vector monitor
will always stay the vital key component of the system, which can not be
eliminated. It is not too far fetched that this also may have been the true
reason why vector displays in mid 1980ths suddenly disappeared from the civil
market (because governments got scared by secret services about their abuse
potential) and why they initially were mainly used for military applications.
- So much about conspiracy theories...

But regard that the intact human brain anyway has an immune system against
unwanted brainwash attempts (like subliminals or hypnose), which can only be
smashed by brutal measures like drugs or extreme exhaustion (e.g. life
threatening torture), thus it is unlikely that a subliminal infested videogame
can do that much harm anyway. And so far anybody finds the ROMs of Polybius
and loads them into an emulator on a normal PC, they anyway would turn
harmless by the lack of a vector monitor."
 
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