A Video Game As An Urban Legend?
 

Ok...so I've seen this floating around for a couple years now and it just strikes me as odd. Please remember, no one has ever confirmed this but it seems to have some credibility. Back in the early 80's ('81 to be specific) a few arcades in backwater towns near Portland, Oregon supposedly recieved a game called Polybius. It's supposed to be an abstract fast moving puzzle game that was only around for about a month. Afterwards a bunch of the kids who played it suffered selective amnesia (of important stuff like their names and where they lived), horrible nightmares, and a total loss of interest in video games (allegedly one of these kids went on to be a huge anti-video game activist). Adding to that (again, allegedly), some owners have claimed to see men in black coats come in and hook the games up to computers to record playing habits, statistics, etc. (instead of removing coins which they seemed uninterested in). Also oddly enough the opening screen for the game lists it's creator as "Sinnesloschen" and if my German's as good as it used to be that roughly means "loss of senses" (the company itself does not, nor has it ever, existed). Again, I emphasize that none of this is really proveable but it'd be wicked cool if it did. There's more stuff available for your viewing pleasure at:

Polybius

Draw your own conclusions.

dont have time to read the story right now...but lots of games can make people have all kinds of problems...but this is kinda strange...I will have to read it all after work

haha cool

is the game on that link sposta work?? man i wanna play that junk...:yes: if there if some secret thing to make it work let me know...

No that's just a picture. You can download and emulator and supposedly there's a rom out there that the emulator loads and lets you play it on your computer.
That's how you can play SNES, and other such consoles on your computer.

damn thats crazy

Damn Oregonians :D :D :D

Send that to mtv's show that proves/disproves urban legends..

You'll get they're researchers to answer your question for you...

Oh and for the record I think it's false... the worst any game has done is cause seizures but so do strobe lights at certain frequences...

Who knows though... It would be cool if true... they should make everyone play....

P.S.

My sister's husband is a weirdo and from oregon I'll ask him... he may know something...

I've got a friend who was living in Portland around that time and was a big video game freak. He tells me he's heard of it but doesn't know of anyone who played it nor had he played it himself. I've actually thought about sending it to the Big Urban Myth show...but how could you possibly substantiate something like that? It's not like there's a ton of purely factual information floating around out there about it. But oh well...I've always been partial to ghost stories so I want to believe but I'm skeptical at the same time.