The True Story behind Polybius, Gaming’s Most Bizarre Urban Legend

(suspenseful music) - [Instructor] Welcome to Part 6 of your training. Let's meet the device you'll be working with. This is Polybius. On the outside, it may look like an ordinary arcade cabinet. But on the inside, Polybius holds advanced surveillance systems, perfect for tracking user behavior. Careful! Users may experience some slight side effects. The Polybius machine, the future of covert surveillance. - [Narrator] Between the 1950s and 1970s, the CIA was experimenting with alternative ways to weaken the enemy. The program was called Project MKUltra. The CIA tested on unaware subjects, using hypnosis and psychoactive drugs in order to find the perfect interrogation method. In 1976, the secret program was exposed to the public. The revelation spurred countless conspiracy theories that film producers were quick to pull from. Movies like WarGames and The Last Starfighter combined paranoia thrills and video game sensibilities. But movies weren't the only things inspired by MKUltra. Beyond the theater marquees, one of the biggest video game urban legends was brewing. And it all started with a mysterious arcade cabinet that suddenly appeared in the quiet town of Portland. (upbeat pop music) This is Logan Bowden. - I am Director of Operations here at QuarterWorld Arcade in Portland Oregon. - [Narrator] Logan loves urban legends. - Oh, yeah, I love 'em. - [Narrator] And he's kind of become a connoisseur of the weird and wonderful myths from Portland's past. - I've been gathering the local lore. As Portland goes, you quickly learn a lot about what Portland was and the folklore that surrounds it. - [Narrator] Folklore like Polybius, Portland's most infamous legend, which he learned about while watching TV with a friend. - We were watching “The Simpsons” episode that has the Polybius in the background. And he started laughing. And I had no idea what he was talking about, so he filled me in. (suspenseful music) The legend of Polybius, the short and skinny of it is, around 1981, this arcade cabinet appeared in a few arcades in the outskirts of Portland. Now if you played this game, it was said that you would have seizures, fits of amnesia, night terrors, and also just a complete desire to continue playing this game. - [Narrator] So why would someone inadvertently create a video game that had all these effects? Perhaps, it was on purpose. - Supposedly, every couple of weeks, these strange men in black suits would show up. And they wouldn't take any money out of the machines, they would just open up the back, supposedly, maybe, taking some readings of data, perhaps a continuation of MKUltra. And then, after about two months, just as mysteriously as they appeared, poof, disappeared, and they've never been seen since. - [Narrator] And so a myth was born, and with it came a legion of believers and skeptics trying to decipher fact from fiction. (rhythmic electronic music) This is Brian Dunning. He makes a living debunking outlandish stories and has heard many tall tales. So Brian, tell us why the story of Polybius was a little different? - It turned out, kind of much to my surprise, that just about every piece of evidence supporting the story was true. First, two kids actually did get knocked out playing video games in Portland, Oregon in 1981. Second, 10 days after that, the government actually was raiding arcades and taking games out. Third, we know the games were used by the government for training. And finally, there was a game called Poly-Play. It was a case where this game was physically removed from every arcade in which it existed. - [Narrator] So it seems like all the pieces of the puzzle exist, leading to a confirmation of the legend, right Brian? - Arcade culture is extensively documented. They had trade magazines. They had consumer magazines. And in all of those issues, throughout the entire 1980s, there is not a single mention anywhere of a game called Polybius. We know for a fact that it did not exist. - [Narrator] But proprietors of the legend weren't quite willing to let the myth die. (dramatic organ music) So they began to design different elements of the game themselves. School teacher and dedicated arcade builder, Paul Santa Cruz, is working hard on bringing the legend to life. (dramatic organ music) - [Paul] One day, it kinda popped in my head, "You know what, I'm gonna make a Polybius." - [Narrator] But how, exactly, do you make a Polybius? Well in 2007, an underground community of gamers actually developed a hypnotic video game and marquee graphics inspired by the myth. It's what they thought the game could actually look like. Paul decided to take the work one step further and build a fully-custom arcade cabinet. - Everything was there that I needed. The graphics were there. The game was there. So maybe the cabinet wanted to exist in real space and time. I wanted people to see it and stop and turn to their friends and say, "Wait a minute, is that really it?" I wanted it to be part of that mythos. (rhythmic electronic music) - [Narrator] So there you have it, the story of how a video game legend became an arcade reality. - I don't think it matters at all that the legend is true or false. It's just a fun thing to follow. - I had a lot of people tell me the cabinet was cool and didn't have any interest in playing it because they weren't gamers. But they loved the fact that this thing existed. - If Polybius didn't exist, it does now, minus the seizures and amnesia. You're not gonna, like, be a sleeper cell, or are you? (rhythmic music)