prokopetz:

atma505:

chinburd:

prokopetz:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

drfitzmonster:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

drfitzmonster:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

tasha-the-little-monster:

mysterymanbob:

8bitrevolver:

8bitcrookz:

The Polybius Mystery:

Polybius is an arcade cabinet described in an urban legend, which is said to have induced various psychological effects on players. The story describes players suffering from amnesia, night terrors, and a tendency to stop playing all video games. Around a month after its supposed release in 1981, Polybius is said to have disappeared without a trace. There is no evidence that such a game has ever existed.

The game has shown up in movies & tv shows like The Simpsons and Wreck it Ralph.

I want to believe

absolutely my favorite urban legend by far, I used to follow a forum dedicated to just pooled information about cabinet sightings in old scrapbook photographs and family members who claim to have seen or even played the game. most claims on the forum say the can’t really remember anything about the game down to even what kind of game it was.

I still love this

The Polybius legend is so fricking creepy because it seems like it could actually be true O.O

i have never heard of this

it is SUPER creepy though wow

Real life is full of so many CREEPY MYSTERIES O.O

IT IS

AND I LOVE READING ABOUT THEM

YYEEEEEEE

Real life Creepy Mysteries are one of my fave things!

tho I have too often made the foolish mistake of reading about them when alone in the house when it is dark ;_;

The really fascinating thing about the Polybius urban legend is that most of the individual elements are confirmably true.

For example, some early arcade games really did have a tendency to induce brief amnesiac episodes in players, owing to the fact that they triggered photosensitive epilepsy; prior to the advent of arcade games, bright flashing lights in rapidly cycling colours were rarely encountered in everyday life, so most people with photosensitive epilepsy didn’t know they had it, and there was little public awareness of the condition, creating the impression that the games themselves had some sort of mystical power.

Likewise, many early video arcades really were subject to covert monitoring by law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, though it had less to do with unauthorised medical experiments and more to do with the fact that video arcades were suspected – sometimes correctly – of being fronts for illegal gambling rings.

Basically, a whole series of unrelated events added up to a single freakishly plausible conspiracy theory. Taken by itself, each claim made by the theory could be independently verified – it’s just the connections between them that were spurious.

@datmassivepanda

Prokopetz’s informative post seems to explain why a lot of rumors over a “haunted arcade machine” would spread.

Really, there’s only one question left…  did Polybius exist?

It’s highly unlikely that it did, if only because of the timing.

The general idea of mysteriously appearing arcade cabinets that had mind-altering powers and were monitored by sinister Men in Black had begun circulating in popular urban legends at least as early as 1981.

(Fun fact: those legends inspired the 1984 feature film The Last Starfighter!)

However, as far as anyone can tell, the name “Polybius” didn’t become attached to those legends until around 1998.

Given that there’s a gap of at least 17 years in there, the most likely scenario is that Polybius is a later fabrication based on an existing bit of urban folklore.