I mean, here you have an urban legend (partially grounded in truth) about an arcade game that was purported to drive players (mostly children) insane, the whole thing took place in Oregon, and nobody even touches it.
The Legend of Polybius:
As the story goes, Polybius was an arcade game, similar to the Atari vector shoot-‘em-up game Tempest (albiet with included mazes and logic puzzles) that was installed in a meager few arcades outside of Portland around 1981. Like many objets de mystère tend to be in these kinds of stories, it was oddly featureless - unlike the typical upright arcade consoles, which were always heavily decorated in artwork on every side, the Polybius consoles were completely black, save for the name on the front.
As kids started to play the games, increasing incidences started turning up of these same children experiencing bouts of nausea, amnesia, being unable to sleep, frequent nightmares, suicidal tendencies, alarming apathy, and developing a sudden, irrational fear of video games.
It was also reported that the machines were being frequently inspected by anonymous men dressed in black, in a manner which seemed to indicate that they were collecting data from the machines. Of course, this is reminiscent of the stories of “Men in Black” associated more often with accounts of unidentified aircraft and “alien” visitation. Those who believe in the legend attribute this to being somehow related to the CIA, and possibly a shadowy government operation using the youth of America as unwitting guinea pigs for thought-control experimentation.
The single, un-sourced screenshot that has appeared in the midst of all this shows the name of the company that developed the game: “Sinnesloschien Inc.“ Roughly translated using German umlauts, "sinnesloschien” can be interpreted as “sense delete” or “sensory extinguishing”. If there was anything to back the validity of the screenshot or the manufacturer, it would provide fuel to the fire of the idea that the game was created to eschew the ethics of human psychological experimentation by doing it covertly under the guise of a simple arcade game.
Unsurprisingly, actual concrete evidence to this point has yet to be uncovered.
What we do know for a fact is that the beta version of the Tempest arcade games featured a wire frame shape that spiralled around the gunner, who remained stationary in the center, and that this was found to trigger motion sickness in photo-sensitive individuals.
We also know that the U.S. Army did commission Atari to develop an alternate version of their popular Battlezone combat simulation game (This version was known as The Bradley Trainer, and was employed by the U.S. military in target-training gunners in preparation for manning the Bradley armored fighting vehicle).
Lastly, we know that there actually were two men - Jeff Dailey and Peter Burkowski - who devoted so much of their lives to competitive gaming, they neglected their own health to the point that each man (at the very young ages of 19 and 18, respectively) died of a heart attack literally minutes within obtaining high scores on the game Berzerk.
Like any good urban legend, the tale of Polybius rests upon a few tiny islands of truth, mired in a sea of storytelling and speculation.
Perhaps someday, someone out there might see fit to try to incorporate this fascinating urban legend into the rather apropos setting of Gravity Falls.
Great evidence that this 16th century book of ancient history was not always stored spine-out! The author, title, and a location/item number (68) appear on the lower edge of the text block. Because we are so used to storing books vertically now, the pretty lettering in this location makes it feel like you’ve found a secret message.
“In 1981, an arcade in the Portland, Oregon area was the scene of countless gamers coming down with migraines, heart attacks, addiction, seizures, strokes, and even amnesia, all due to one game cabinet: Polybius. The game itself was said to have been created by an unknown government agency to test mind control technology on unsuspecting civilians. It worked — almost too well. Or so the legend goes…. (FULL STORY VIA ‘INPUT MAG’)
