OKAY SO PRE- ANNOUNCEMENT THIS IS THE LAST OF THIS SET

Polybius -- The Mind-Destroying Arcade Game

  The story of Polybius has all the ingredients of a good urban legend: It's creepy, it's mysterious and teenagers die in it (or are traumatized, at the very least). And it's likely based on truth, at least to some degree. How much? Who knows. 

According to the legend, Polybius was a game that appeared in a few arcades in Portland, Ore., for a short time in 1981. The cabinet was supposedly completely black (minus the logo), and the game was supposed to be very similar to Atari's shoot 'em up Tempest, except for the addition of Pac-Man-type mazes and logic puzzles, and the fact that it drove people insane. Kids hooked on the game began experiencing side effects like nausea, sleep disturbance and aversion to video games.

Some sources claim the side effects were more violent: selective amnesia, horrifying nightmares, suicidal tendencies and "the inability to become sad." (Same)

Now here's where it starts to stretch into Alex Jones territory. According to an unnamed arcade owner, men in black coats could be seen collecting data from the machines, leading some to believe that the whole thing was a CIA-type experiment.

    Anyway, the only "evidence" of the game's existence, so far, is a screencap of the title screen ...   

  ... and a black and white photo of the cabinet: 

Of course, any serious attempt to search for more information on the game is hindered by the fact that people have started building their own Polybius cabinets and trying to re-create the game based on its descriptions. So, basically, they make it look like something that might give someone a seizure:

WARNING DO NOT WATCH IF PRONE TO SEIZURES 

  Of course, it seems kinda convenient that the story of Polybius surfaced only within the past decade or so, presumably when the people who witnessed the events in the first place all went, "You know that mind-fucking video game from '81? In retrospect, that was rather odd." Obviously, the part about the men in black seems like something made up by someone trying to be creepy on a message board. 

So what's the truth? Well, we know there was a glitchy prototype of Tempest (the game Polybius was supposed to resemble) that caused nausea, and we also know the U.S. government approached Atari to design a special version of one of its games in 1980. Snopes.com, while completely dismissing the legend, claims it could be an updated version of the early '80s rumor that special agents collected information in arcades -- which seems to confirm that the "men in black" sightings go back that long.

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