Gaming Urban Legends Wiki
Advertisement

The "Polybius" legend is an urban legend revolving around the fictional arcade game Polybius.

Description

Polybius is a fictional arcade game that first appeared in urban legends starting in the early 2000s. It was supposedly a mysterious arcade machine that would appear by the hundreds in arcades across the United States for a short time before mysteriously disappearing. Supposedly, the game was part of a secret government experiment to test the effects of subliminal messages and psychoactive effects in gamers. "Eyewitnesses" claim to have seen mysterious men in black periodically showing up in arcades which held the game and gathering data from it.

The existence of the Polybius game cabinets is unproven and is likely false. No video footage of the game exists, although many have come forward claiming to have ROM downloads of the game. None of these have been verified. The game was supposedly developed by a company called "Sinneslöschen", but there are no known video game development companies by that name. No copyright exists on file for the game. People who claim to have seen the game can't seem to agree on what the gameplay was, with everything from a prototype 3-D shooter and a Galaga-style game having been proposed.

Advertisement