Polybius: The 80s Arcade Game, Kids Who Played Had Nightmares and Went Missing

A well-known game urban legend.

In 1981, in Portland, Oregon, USA, an arcade machine that no one had seen before suddenly appeared in several game arcades. It was called Polybius, with no manufacturer's mark. Its graphics were flashy, the colors flickered, and kids who played it got addicted, lining up to insert coins.

Not long after, kids who had played it started having problems: nightmares, headaches, memory loss. Some fainted in the arcade, others said someone was talking to them in their dreams. One or two, it was said, never came back.

According to the legend, every few days, men in black suits would come to the machine, take data, and not take money. Then the machine disappeared overnight.

Some say it was a psychological experiment conducted by the US government, using games to test the effect on the human brain. The development company in the legend had a name that sounded like a German company, sounding very scary.

The story first appeared on a game database website around the year 2000. Later, when people checked, there was no record of this machine in newspapers or arcade records from that year, and no physical unit was found. However, in 1981, there were reports in Portland of two kids who had problems playing arcade games: one had stomach pain after playing for a long time, and another had an attack and was sent to the hospital. The same year, the FBI did visit several game arcades in Portland, but they were investigating gambling machines, and a batch of machines were removed.

Some say Polybius grew out of these true events: kids having problems from playing, men in suits removing the machines—put them together and you get a story.

Later, a game developer in the UK simply made a same-named game, released in 2017, with flickering graphics, and many people played it, but no one had nightmares.

#Paranormal #网络转载 #都市传说