305. The Polybius Mystery -- Video Games

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Prosecutors - Episode 305: The Polybius Mystery – Video Games

Introduction to Polybius In Episode 305 of The Prosecutors, hosts Alice and Brett delve into the enigmatic tale of Polybius, a fabled arcade game that has become a cornerstone of video game urban legends. Released in 1981, Polybius is rumored to have possessed hypnotic qualities, causing severe psychological and physical side effects in its players. Brett introduces the episode with intrigue, stating, "Imagine a video game so addicting that it could drive you insane or even kill you," setting the stage for a deep exploration of this mysterious phenomenon (02:55).

Origins and Early Mentions The legend of Polybius begins in the early 1980s in Portland, Oregon, where reports surfaced of a strange new arcade game appearing in local arcades. Unlike other games of its time, Polybius featured abstract designs, complex geometric shapes, and an eerie soundtrack that captivated and distressed players simultaneously. Alice reminisces about her childhood arcade experiences, emphasizing the allure and communal aspect of arcades before Polybius emerged (04:18).

Claims and Testimonies According to urban legend, Polybius quickly became the most sought-after game, leading to intense addiction among teenagers. Players reported severe side effects, including nausea, stress, nightmares, seizures, suicidal ideations, and difficulty controlling their thoughts. Brett elaborates, "Users who played Polybius couldn't stop despite experiencing horrific side effects," highlighting the game's sinister reputation (14:18). The mystery deepens with reports that high scorers of the game mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

The Men in Black and Government Conspiracy A pivotal aspect of the Polybius legend involves men in black suits who purportedly serviced the game. These figures were seen frequently interacting with the arcade machines, recording data without collecting any coins, which fueled speculations of a government experiment akin to the notorious MK Ultra program. Brett draws parallels between MK Ultra and the supposed intentions behind Polybius, suggesting it was an attempt to use video games for mind control purposes (18:37).

Debunking and Possible Hoaxes Despite the compelling narrative, substantial evidence supporting the existence of Polybius is lacking. Alice highlights that the story gained traction primarily through online forums and a fabricated podcast testimony from "Bobby Feldstein," who attributed his abduction to the game (22:14). Further skepticism arises from conflicting accounts, such as anonymous claims from a supposed Sega programmer and debunking efforts by the YouTube channel Ahoy, which exposed inconsistencies and potential hoaxes surrounding the legend (26:55).

Comparison to Other Urban Legends Alice and Brett compare Polybius to other enduring urban legends like Slender Man and the hook-handed killer, noting how certain stories captivate the public imagination despite lacking verifiable evidence. Brett reflects, "Polybius is just a pure urban legend," positioning it within a broader context of folklore that serves to warn or entertain (79:22).

Psychological Insights and Human Fascination The hosts delve into why such legends persist, exploring the human tendency to create and believe in mysterious stories. Alice muses on the existential aspect, stating, "The stories that we have truly run throughout history," suggesting that legends like Polybius fulfill a deeper need for narrative and myth-making in society (85:00). They discuss how nostalgia and the allure of the unknown contribute to the story's longevity.

Conclusion: Fact or Fiction? Alice and Brett conclude that while there might be a kernel of truth—such as the intense scrutiny and moral panic surrounding arcades in the early '80s—the existence of Polybius as described in the legends is highly improbable. Brett asserts, "There's absolutely no evidence that this game has ever existed," emphasizing the likelihood of Polybius being a collective hallucination or a well-crafted hoax that has taken on a life of its own over the decades (93:00).

Notable Quotes

• Brett (02:55): "Imagine a video game so addicting that it could drive you insane or even kill you."
• Brett (18:37): "Polybius is the next thing [after MK Ultra]. Video games are invented. The CIA sees how addictive it is, how engaged people are, and they think, I wonder if we could use this technology to control people."
• Alice (22:14): "In October 1981, a boy named Bobby Feldstein was abducted from his Portland home and discovered a day later, 60 miles from his home in the Tillamook State Forest."
• Brett (26:55): "A man named Stephen Roche also posted... he claimed he was one of the original programmers of Polybius."
• Brett (79:22): "99% of the songs, of the music, of the stories that have ever been told in human history are lost forever."

Final Thoughts The Prosecutors Episode 305 offers a comprehensive examination of the Polybius mystery, blending factual investigation with critical analysis of urban legends. Through engaging dialogue and meticulous research, Alice and Brett unravel the layers of myth surrounding Polybius, ultimately presenting it as an intriguing but unfounded story that reflects broader societal narratives and human fascination with the unknown.

Transcript

[Alice]

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[Brett]

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[Alice]

All right. UFO sightings the military can't explain, Congressional hearings, Pentagon whistleblower. What does it all mean?

[Brett]

What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new Ancient Aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone. Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Brett.

[Alice]

And I'm Alice.

[Brett]

And we are the Prosecutors. Today on the Prosecutors, imagine a video game so addicting that it could drive you insane or even kill you. And when you play it, someone is always watching. This is the story of Polybius. Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of the Prosecutors. I'm Brett and I'm joined as always by my Electric co host, Alice.

[Alice]

Hi, Brett. Electric, I like that.

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Alice]

Because here we are talking about electronic games. Shall we?

[Brett]

Yeah. And you know, I was surprised I've never used electric to describe you before because you are electric.

[Alice]

Oh, thank you.

[Brett]

I'm running out of words. I mean, this is like 300 and something episodes.

[Alice]

I was gonna say the English language cannot contain all that is the prosecutors.

[Brett]

But hey, it's fine. We're doing well. Doing well. So. Yeah. But today, hey, those of you who've been listening to the podcast last few weeks, been doing a lot of West Memphis three, and we made a promise to you that we would on occasion do some one off stuff for those of you who binge everything. So maybe you haven't actually been listening to West Memphis three or you don't really Like West Memphis three. So this is our gift to you, Polybius. This is a great story if you haven't heard it. You know, we do these every now and then. Like the Cosmonauts. That was a good one. The Ourang Medan. That was a good one. This is sort of a modern version of some of those stories. A question about something that you normally associate with fun and having a good time. Could there be a sinister aspect to it? And we're actually taking you all the way back to the dawn of video games to 1981 for this one, the year of my birth, Alice was but a twinkle in the eye of her parents when video games were really taken off. Alice, were you a video game fan? Did you play video games growing up?

[Alice]

I played Duck Hunt. Oh, yeah. I played Duck Hunt all the time.

[Brett]

Is that right?

[Alice]

You not played Duck Hunt?

[Brett]

I love Duck Hunt.

[Alice]

Duck Hunt with the little gun. Oh, my gosh. I was like, the most fun. And then you. When the dog would laugh at you if you would lose, that was like the Guitar hero of the 90s. You know, you had the gun, you had all this fun. So other than, I mean, Mario. Oh, yeah.

[Brett]

Did you know in Duck Hunt that if you plug in the controller to the second player, the second player can control the ducks?

[Alice]

What?

[Brett]

Yeah.

[Alice]

Nobody knows to go find me a Duck Hunt.

[Brett]

It's like how nobody plays Monopoly by the rules, and that's why everybody hates Monopoly. But if you play it by the rules, it actually makes it a lot more fun and go a lot faster. The same thing with Duck Hunt. Like that would make it so much more fun. It'd be cool if you could shoot the dog more, but.

[Alice]

So all to say is, of course I played video games. I was a child of the 90s. And, you know, all the pixelate. I think back to all the pixelated. Those are the best ones. Like Pac man with just. It's just a Pac man who just moves his mouth in the most, you know, rudimentary of ways. You could play that for hours as it ate a single dot. Nothing like today, where everything's 3D and realistic and you build an entire world. The world was pixelation back then.

[Brett]

Yeah, this. This is going to be a lot of asides in this one. It's like Civilization. I don't know if you ever played Civilizations computer game. You sort of build a civilization as the name implies.

[Alice]

There you go.

[Brett]

And so the first Civilization game is revolutionary. An amazing game. Civilization 2, probably still my favorite. Love Civilization 2. But the problem with Civic Games is sort of, I feel like emblematic of the problem video games is the technology got better, the games got so complex that you weren't playing in a couple days or even a couple weeks. And you had to know all this stuff. There's all these different mechanics you have to worry about. It's just too complex. And I feel like in our day the games were fun, they were hard, but you could play them. You could just sit down and start playing them. You know, you didn't have to read a book to know how to do it.

[Alice]

That's right.

[Brett]

So you know, though, I'll say, when the pandemic started, I did two things. Start a podcast with you and I played Skyrim for the first time. That was life changing. I mean that was.

[Alice]

I do remember that because I had to like text Mrs. Brett to get you off of it in order for us to record. Like, is he around? We need to record now. And she's like, let me go take off as Skyrim.

[Brett]

It almost, you know, and I get sucked. There are certain games I won't play. Like I would like to play Skyrim every day, but I don't play it because I know if I did there'd be no podcast, you know, if I. If I played Starcraft, no podcast. You know, these are games that like I'm playing and I look at the clock and it's four o' clock in the morning and they just take over and take my life ever. So I can't play. But anyways, we're talking about video games. I had an Atari when I was a kid which one of the first home entertainment systems. But before that you actually had to go to the arcade to play video games. In 1979, Pong comes out. It's a big deal. Everybody knows about Pong. And very rapidly there's an explosion of these arcade games and these arcades that you could go to with all your friends and spend all your quarters and play on these massive stand up, they called them cabinets. And that was video games before like Nintendo and everything else took over.

[Alice]

I feel like we're about to embark on a Stranger Things episode. Like this is Stranger Things. I love Stranger Things. It's like so nostalgic callback, but like a scene in Stranger Things is really this entire episode we're stepping into. I remember I was a little bit after, right when arcade games came out, but I was still, you know, a child, right? You would take your sock, right the like, I don't know, halfway up your calf socks. What are those Called not crew socks with like a line jersey sock. And you'd like fill them with quarters and ride down because you tie it to like your handlebars. Because we all biked everywhere and go play games.

[Brett]

And then if you had to beat somebody, you could just like whack them with the sock full of coins. Could do that too. So it worked both ways.

[Alice]

You could do that as well.

[Brett]

Because arcades could be kind of rough places. If you're in the wrong arcade and which we're going to talk about today, that comes into play. And like everything else, arcades had a little bit of a moral panic. Before I say this. If you're in Birmingham, Alabama, great bar in downtown in Birmingham, which is a bar in one room and an arcade in the other one. I can't remember the name of it, but if you google that, you'll find it fantastic. I recommend it. Go check it out tonight anyway. Or, you know, on a Friday night. You could be one of the 47 people who are listening to us record this. There's two different lives people are living, right? Some people are at the arcade bar, some people are talking about arcades. Which one has it better? I'll let you decide.

[Alice]

Anyway, real quick, we're just going to keep aside because, well, you know, this.

[Brett]

Is a real episode, though. I promise.

[Alice]

This is not an April fool's joke. This really is an episode. But, you know, you came here for something a little lighter because we've been talking about a triple homicide for weeks on end now, and it's going to go on for weeks on end. But someone that you and I worked with, Brett, lived down the street from me. And he was a single man, you know, quite a bit older than the two of us, which meant that he had a lot of time because, you know, like toddlers he had chase after. And when he moved because he was down the street from me, I wasn't trying to spy on him, but of course I was like, oh, I wonder, you know, what's coming out of his house. So he lived in, you know, a full, like, I don't know, four bedroom house. But it's just him. And what do you think was in every one of those bedrooms?

[Brett]

I'm gonna go to loom and say an arcade game based on what we're.

[Alice]

Discussing today, not just an arcade game. I counted and I must have missed because I couldn't just sit on my driveway and watch the moving van. I counted 23 arcade games come out of his house. And I have to think that they were Just in every single bedroom lined. And I was like, wow. Did not know that he collected, but they were like the like old school ones. And apparently he just like collected them from all over. We'd drive all over the south to collect them whenever they came out, which was pretty cool. So if you're one of those people who collect like 80s and 90s arcade and work on them, because you can. They're pretty simple. Like, those last forever, you know, my. My iPhone doesn't last for more than a year now, but these arcade games last four years later.

[Brett]

A little bit simpler electronics in the back of your arcade game. Your iPhone has more power than spaceships from the 80s. So. But yeah, so arcades. One thing about arcades, when they started up, like everything else in America, and this does kind of connect to West Memphis 3, I guess there was a moral panic. There was this concern amongst parents and teachers groups and even some politicians that arcades were sort of rotting the brains of children. They were addictive. You know, instead of playing outside or reading a book, kids were playing Space Invaders for hours on end. And the games were just as addictive as any drug. And the other thing that happened, arcades, you got a whole bunch of kids. What do you think you're gonna have? You had people who were selling drugs, you had people who were suspicious characters who were like scoping out the kids. So arcades were both sort of, you know, if you were a kid, they were this amazing, incredible place. Like a casino. You walk in a casino and there's all the flashing lights and there's the sounds and everything else, and it just makes you. There's something about it. Your dopamine is. Or serotonin or whatever it is, is pumping through your brain when you hear it. Well, that was what an arcade was like for a kid. You walk in and it's just amazing. But for parents, they saw it very differently. And all of this comes together in this story we're going to tell today about an arcade game called Polybius. So now that we've talked for 10 minutes, we'll dive right in. According to some and. And maybe according to legend, In October of 1981, a strange new arcade game began appearing around Portland, Oregon. Never in Portland, but in sort of the surrounding suburbs, the malls, that sort of thing. Some people said that it was a black cabinet, it had no name on the side, no artwork, nothing like that. And that actually wasn't too unusual because as these games were being developed, sometimes they would be market tested and you would put them in places like suburbs of Portland. And you hadn't done the artwork yet. You rolled in, you see if the kids like it. If they do, you mass produce it, you send it around the country. And so a lot of people thought that's what they were seeing. Oh, there's this new game. But when they went up to it, the screen flashes on and it said Polybius and these sort of bright green blocky letters. And the thing is, this is 1981, and even from the beginning, it was unlike anything they had seen. This wasn't simplistic. This was an arcade game that featured this abstract design. There were dots and lines accompanied by high pitched beeps and buzzes. According to some, the game included complex geometric shapes that the user could destroy via a standard sort of remote controlled spaceship. So the kind of thing you see in Space Invaders, but instead of shooting at aliens, you're shooting at these almost sort of esoteric designs. Actually looked up one of the symbols that is described in this, and it's from the Book of Enoch. So there's like all of these sort of unusual designs that you're shooting at. And they had mathematic principles to it where if you did it in a certain way, you know, the square root of this or the multiple of this, you would advance. It was very unusual. Unlike what most people were used to. It wasn't the standard Space Invaders and it wasn't the standard shoot them up type game. And as you're going through it, the designs would begin to morph and change in ways that felt eerie and disorienting, but also addicting. And the game quickly became the most sought after in the arcade, with teenagers lining up for a chance to play what was a highly addictive machine. Sometimes it getting into fights over who would get to play it next.

[Alice]

Using those socks full of quarters.

[Brett]

There you go. Using those socks full of quarters to beat each other down. But it didn't stop there. This wasn't just the hot new thing has it that users who played Polybius, they couldn't stop despite experiencing horrific side effects including nausea, stress, nightmares. Some even reported experiencing seizures, having suicidal ideations, and difficulty controlling their own thoughts. But they kept going back and they got better and better at the game. And that's when the story started to come out that the players who accomplished the highest scores, they didn't get sick, they didn't have bad thoughts, they disappeared, never to be seen again.

[Alice]

Whoo. Really is beginning to feel like a Stranger Things episode this Polybius. I mean, surely it didn't just arrive because if you've seen an arcade game, they're huge, they're massive, they're difficult to move on your own. So when you have these arcade games, they really are a standalone. And typically, you would normally expect someone to come over, use a little key, open up the cabinet, take out the coins, that sort of thing. Right. But Polybius was a little bit different. You see, Polybius seemed to be serviced more than any other game in the arcade, and not by, you know, some guy who worked at the arcade, maybe with a little bit of a plumber's bum as he leaned over with his jeans that kind of sagged down and a big wad of keys on his side, pulling the pants even further down. Not that kind of guy. No. The kinds of people that were servicing these games were seemingly just as mysterious as the game itself. They were men in black suits, and they would come and open the machines every week, but they would record its data and leave, never taking the coins from the machine, which is a bit bizarre, because what's the point of an arcade game? Isn't it to get people to give you their quarters, make some money off of it? But no, those coins stayed in the arcade, and what were they taking down every time they opened the machine? What kind of data were they taking? But this happened often, more often than any other game, and again, by these men in suits. So some even reported that these men would just stand there and watch them as they played. But almost as quickly as this game appeared, it mysteriously vanished when these same men came about just a month later and removed the game from the arcade for good. This wasn't just a market study, because clearly it was skyrocketing in terms of popularity. If this was a market test, it did great. You would have expected it to be then mass produced and appear on every single corner across America for kids to be lining up to play the game. But no. After one month of this highly addicting game and recording data, mysteriously never removing any coins from it, one day these men and suits came and rolled away this game, never to be heard from again. At least, that's the urban legend. This urban legend has largely been perpetuated by the testimony of a man named Bobby Feldstein, who was abducted from his home in 1981 and claimed that Polybius was the reason. Okay, this gets crazier. And here's the thing. I can think of several stories in the news in the past couple years that sounds something like this. So while it's a little bit bizarre, especially to blame your disappearance on a video game Listen to this. So Bobby's story has been recounted on a podcast called the Polybius Conspiracy, which has recently given more credence to this urban legend. Because if you want to become fact, become a podcast. But his story is not the only one of its kind. Users have popped up in various Internet forums over the years claiming to have played the game and have been involved in the creation of the game. So if this is just an urban legend, where are all these people coming from who claim to remember this game from back in the 80s? And some who even said, I worked on that game and it was way more nefarious than you can ever imagine.

[Brett]

And so you can already feel what's about to happen. Many believers think Polybius is not just a game that was popular, maybe caused some problems, they did some market research and then got shut down. No, they believe it was a government experiment to test the effects of the game on the minds of its users. And after MK Ultra, this was not exactly unfounded. MK Ultra, as you may recall, that was the CIA's effort to test the effects of LSD on various people in the United States. So same type of thing, right? Drugs come out, LSD is developed. The CIA thinks, huh, that's interesting. I wonder if we could use that to control people. And they test lsd, and this is fact. This is not some conspiracy. This actually absolutely happened. And so the theory is that Polybius is the next thing. Video games are invented. The CIA sees how addictive it is, how engaged people are, and they think, I wonder if we could use this technology to control people. And that was the point of Polybius. Now, look, it's hard to say exactly where this came from. We're going to dive into whether this is true. And if it is true, is it a government experiment? It's hard to say, but you can see how this story grabs people. It has genuine connections to the gaming culture during the 80s. There's just enough detail to pull you in, but enough vagueness that it's hard to check, because, as we said, suburbs of Portland, not even Portland itself. And so you got to wonder, is this the effect of one person on the Internet coming up with a really interesting story that's now taken off? Or is it a real conspiracy, one that is going to leave people scratching their heads for years and years to come?

[Alice]

In October 1981, a boy named Bobby Feldstein was abducted from his Portland home and discovered a day later, 60 miles from his home in the Tillamook State Forest. I mean, even if this boy walked for 24 hours. It's hard to imagine that he walked 60 miles, but that's where he's found. And when he was found, he was dirty and barefoot with his clothes torn. And there were clear signs that he had spent some time in that forest. Now, this sounds like a classic abduction of some sort of what happened to this child. But here's the thing. The reason for Bobby's abduction was not for ransom. It wasn't for a custodial dispute. The perpetrator was never discovered. But years later, Bobby would remember something. He would blame Polybius for what happened to him. An article on Slate.com by Jacob Brogan recounts Bobby's story. On the day of his abduction, Bobby had been playing a new game at Coin Kingdom, which was a dodgy arcade in the city. And as he got deeper into the game, things started to go wrong in his head and consciousness dissolving into percussive static. You can almost feel this, right, that static within an electronic video game. And that's what's going through his mind here. And all of a sudden, the feeling lingered and grew as he made his way home. An unavoidable sense that something was off. That's when they came for him. A group of mysterious figures approached the house. They entered. Bobby tried to scream, but he was utterly paralyzed, unable to move. And not long after, he blacked out.

[Brett]

When Bobby awoke, he was somewhere deep underground, still unable to move, though his restraints were now physical. Suddenly, a badly mangled boy approached him, freeing him from his bonds. And together, the pair fled through the tunnels. And Bobby says he was sure they were being followed. By the time they emerged from the tunnels, the boy had vanished. And Bobby found himself deep in a forest 60 some miles from Portland. When Bobby got home, he tried to tell others what happened to him, but no one believed him. Years later, Bobby now leads walking tours in Portland in the area, recounting his story to those who attend. And I will tell you, the Polybius Conspiracy is a fantastic podcast. You should go listen to it right now. I am about to spoil it. So if you're listening live and you don't want to hear the spoilers, maybe mute your computer if you're listening when we release this, maybe fast forward, I don't know, a minute or so if you don't want the Polybius Conspiracy spoiled for you. So that's what I'm going to tell you to do. Okay, Give you a few seconds to do that. So the Polybius Conspiracy is fantastic. It is a great podcast. The problem with it, Bobby doesn't actually exist. He is in fact a character fabricated for the podcast, which is a combination of fact and fiction. So it is a podcast about Polybius and the stories about Polybius. But in addition to that, they have taken sort of that story and crafted it around their own presentation. It is amazing, though. I mean, it is so well done. And if you didn't know it wasn't true, you wouldn't know it wasn't true. Like, go listen to it, it'll blow your mind. And people basically listen to the whole thing, thought the whole thing was true, and then found out later, oh, actually, no. This is just a really well done piece of mockumentary, though much of it is true. So they interview all sorts of experts, historians, who talk about Polybius, but then this part of the story definitely is not true. So to the extent we have Bobby, we can rule him out as any sort of proof of the existence of Polybius. But Bobby is not the only person who will claim to have been involved with Polybius in some way.

[Alice]

Okay, so while Bobby doesn't exist, there are other people who. This is no spoiler. They really do exist. But they have things to say that are very similar to what Bobby said. So there's one anonymous user who claimed that Polybius was real, and not just that he played it, but he actually worked on it. The person who's known only by his online handle, prg017, claimed to have been a programmer with Sega's arcade division. He said that they received a request one day to create a game from a secret organization called Sinislocian, who had some level of governmental power. And though they were not sure from what, what country, it's really interesting that Sega can just be like, it might be the U.S. it could be, I don't know, someone nefarious. But Senislocian is who tasked them to create this game. Now, this user, prg017, claims that they were given a project sheet and a map of the human brain and instructions on how to stimulate those areas of the brain and asked to incorporate it into a video game. They went on to say that the game took a long time to create. Obviously you're bringing in like the maps of the brain here. And it utilized technology far beyond what was available at the time. They described the game as a puzzler game, but with other odd elements to it. Apparently the game testers experienced strange symptoms such as memory loss and other sorts of things that were happening, like the nausea that we have reported of people who played the game. So they were apparently very effective at the project that they didn't even know what the purpose was when the game was done. Those involved signed a document promising secrecy, which might explain why this person was anonymous. But while this sounds incredibly interesting and fits right into that conspiracy of the government trying to use video games to see if they could control people's minds, and perhaps this Sega Arcade division was successful in it. This recollection from PRG017 is extremely vague. It's very poorly written. And the timeline that this person sets for does have some issues leading people to deduce that it was very likely just a fraudulent testimony.

[Brett]

It is interesting though. You can find it online and read it. It has a few things. You know, you always look for sort of random facts that make you think there might be some veracity. One of them is that this guy is working for Sega. He later works on the Sega cd, which was. If you played video games back in the day, they came in cartridges and the cartridge basically had a motherboard in it. You probably all remember having to blow the cartridge out to get the dust off the motherboard so that it would play. The whole game is on the motherboard and that's the way games played. But cartridges had limitations, memory being a big one. Well, Sega came out with a Sega cd and this there was a revolution because for the first time they were going to use CDs for games, not cartridges. And he apparently worked on this, according to him, and he says a lot of things about this, that honestly, his work on Sega CD sounds more realistic than his work on Polybius. But one thing he says is that there were a few technical aspects of SEGA CD where the Polybius code was. Was useful. So they actually used the code from Polybius in SEGA cd. So according to him, if you access the code from SEGA cd, you can find remnants of the Polybius code. Now, I'm not a coder. I'm sure people have tried to do this, but that's sort of an interesting idea that this game sort of lives on in SEGA and what Sega has done going forward. So that's one person who talked about this. And so he sort of lays it out as well. There's this government conspiracy. Cineslosian is the entity that's involved in this, et cetera, et cetera. Well, in response to this, a man named Stephen Roche also posted. And he basically said that's all bs and he knows that because he worked on Polybius. So he's a man from the Czech Republic named Stephen Roach. And he claimed in A series of posts from 2006 that he was one of the original programmers of Polybius. And he asserted that he and several other amateur programmers had founded Cineslocian in 1978. And it was a company that worked on component parts for printed circuit boards. And that's what we're basically talking about in the cartridge. So they're doing that is like their main job, but they're using those skills to also do some programming on the side, sort of their creative side of things. And he says that in 1980, what he describes as a Southern American company, which I think is a company in the United States that's in the south, not like a Brazilian company, South American. But it's difficult to say. And in fairness to him, he says he's from the Czech Republic and is not a native English speaker. So give him. Give him a little bit of a break. But he says this company reached out to them. Now, he doesn't name the company because he doesn't want to have any sort of liability, but they reach out to this company, Sinus Lotion, and they want to create an arcade game with a puzzle element that's centered around a new approach to video game graphics. Now, you might wonder, why would this company reach out to some random group of people in the Czech Republic, which would have been Czechoslovakia, I guess, at the time, to do this? Right? And the reason, though, actually, is a reason. This was a cutthroat industry. Everybody was stealing from everybody. And if you had a good idea, you could bet somebody was going to try and steal it from you. So using the sort of offshore company to do this was actually really smart because the chances of those people being involved with your competition, not as great. So that would be one of the reasons they would do this. And they actually offered them a very large sum of money. They agreed. And the user goes on to say that they spent countless hours working on this game. And he had a colleague he named Marek Vyusik, who came up with the name Polybius because he had studied Greek mythology and Greek history. Polybius, for those of you who don't know, and I don't know why you would, was a historian who wrote a book called the Histories. It wasn't creative with titles. Right. But he's historian, and he's a Greek historian. I'm gonna go on a limb and say he probably pronounced his name Polybias, not Polybius, but whatever. And he's a real person. Absolutely. And what's interesting about him is a couple things. Number one, he invented One of the first ciphers, the Polybius cipher. The Polybias cipher. So he was into cryptography, which is interesting given what we're talking about. He also was a big believer in only reporting something as fact. If you had a witness, if you'd either seen it yourself or you had a witness who you had spoken to firsthand, who had seen it, this was sort of his standard. I'm not putting it in my histories unless I have someone I can point to who actually saw it firsthand. And that was sort of a principle he laid down, which is a pretty good principle, I guess. But this was the guy they decided to name the game after. And he sort of had a similar narrative to ones before that. They developed this game. It had this very unique visual element and we'll talk about how that was different from standard games. And it very much did exist and it would cause people to have some side effects. They built this game, they were very proud of it. They thought it would be incredibly successful. It went out for beta testing and wouldn't you know it, there was a 13 year old boy who suffered a serious epileptic F fit when playing the game, who ended up in the hospital. And there was some really bad press around it. And the company developing the game said, you know what, we don't want anything to do with this. We don't want our company to be known as a company that kills kids, even though the kid didn't die. So we're cutting this off. And they pulled it out and that was the end of Polybius. This was a deep disappointment to the people who developed the game, but they also were afraid that their names was tied to it because on the Polybius screen it says Senislocian as the developer. And so they actually disbanded the company at that point and sort of moved on and regretted how this all went from that point forward. So really interesting, two sides of this. You have one guy who's saying this is absolutely a government conspiracy to have mind control and to take over people and everything else. And you have another guy who says, no, no, no, the game, basically there was a bad thing that happened with it. And so it never made it into beta testing. And we pulled it out. And it wasn't mysterious, it's just people thought it was mysterious because of how it disappeared. Two very different stories about how this game came into being.

[Alice]

And this is all very interesting, right? Because now we have. So there are certainly elements or people online who are talking about this game who claim to have played it or claim to have been, you know, their lives affected by it. Who we can poke holes into their testimony. Like it's kind of doubtful they're either anonymous, we don't know. But this seems very detailed and it seems to fit with what other people's memory is, right? A very popular game, but all of a sudden these men in black suits come and roll the game away and then it's gone forever. It seems to fit this narrative of, whoa. Let's just say it's. It's lawyers who kill all the fun, right? Like, we don't want the liability on this. We don't want to cause seizures. We don't want people suing us. We don't want our name associated with this. Let's just call it what it is, lawyers making, you know, these companies be boring. So then one day the game disappeared. So it's not anything conspir, rather it was just liability. But there was a documentary by Ahoy which is a YouTube gaming channel, and they pointed out several issues with this testimony that point to it being false as well. First, the user claimed that he had moved to Czechoslovakia in 1965 due to his parents business interests. Now this is unlikely because in 1965 Czechoslovakia was a communist nation and you could have just emigrate there. Second, this person claimed that his colleague studied Greek mythology. Remember, that's how they came up with the name Polybius. But Polybius is not a mythological figure. He was a historical figure, as Brett noted. So his post contained very few original details and nothing that could be substantiated in any way. And they were ultimately able to trace this IP address used by Stephen Roach to several other accounts and eventually found the man behind the Steven Roach Persona on social media. And it's not Steven Roach, though he wouldn't admit that his story was a hoax. It just seems very likely that what he has said is, by the way, did. I don't think this is just advent of the Internet where people just go online and like write fan fiction or just like say things that are untrue. I guess that's always existed in all of time because we are all fantasy seekers in some way. But it is such an interesting thing that know you can sign up for any username on Reddit, on any social media, you can have a Twitter handle. Nobody knows who you are, right? And to just spout off these huge stories for fun, I don't know for clicks to perpetuate an urban legend perhaps. But you can see how all of these, as they're saying it, there are lots of People who, I don't necessarily think they all are in cahoots in one big conspiracy, getting into a chat room and saying, let's go out there today folks, and let's make sure the world believes in Polybius. And so it's a very interesting psychological test, I guess as to why these stories are popping up, how much is true, why they're even putting it out there. There's no money to be gained here. It's not like Polybius is actually for sale out there. You can't find it to even play it. But ahoy. Looking into this particular testimony of this guy who claims to have moved to Czechoslovakia, there's just too many holes in the timeline for it to really ring true.

[Brett]

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[Alice]

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[Brett]

And when I say in depth, I'm talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood, complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings and student to teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with the sales history of each agent. So when it comes to finding a home, not just a house, this is everything you need to know all in1place.homes.com We've done your homework and let me just say Ahoy. The documentary. It's like an hour and a half long documentary on YouTube that he did. Awesome. So good. I mean, the production quality on that documentary could have been on Netflix. It was that good. So if you're hearing the story and you're really interested in it, go to Ahoy. Watch the Polyvius documentary. Fantastic. So that brings us to the timeline. So here's the thing. There's no mention of the Polybius video game that anybody can find prior to 2000. So if Polybius was something people discussed either in print or online, there wasn't a lot to find. Now here's the thing. Finding anything online from before 2000, really difficult. Before 2000, the Internet was the wild west. It was made up of a few chat rooms, Usenet groups, Yahoo Chat, that kind of thing. I mean, most of that stuff's gone, so that doesn't strike me as that significant. In print recall, if Polybius was a thing, probably not going to be in print. Print media is very limited. They're only really talking about actual things. Right. So this discussion of whether Polybius exists And what happened. And it existed for a month and sort of this whole story wouldn't necessarily appear in print, so not necessarily a big deal. But it does make it difficult to nail down the fact that the game originated in 1981. And it does raise very serious concerns when you don't have anything closer in time to when Polybius apparently existed for about a month to support it. So let's go through the timeline of what we do have. So on March 3rd to a page for Polybius was created on Coinop.org which was a big deal website at the time. And it was a website that talked about video games and everything else. And it included a description of the game and a screenshot of the title screen. And this screenshot, no one knows where it comes from, and no one's ever been able to identify where it comes from. But this screenshot has become sort of the definitive image. If you're watching this right now, you see the screenshot on your screen, and if you are listening on the podcast, you can Google it later on, it will show up basically this greenish, blobby Polybius name, then copyright 1981 Sinus Lotion, Inc. Credits 0 so it looks like if someone took a picture of the screen title or if they pulled the picture from the circuitry of the game, this is what they would get. So all future references to the game's description seem to come from this initial post. The creation date on this article is August 3, 1998. That seems to be a placeholder for all older articles on the site. So it's, you know, it was the old school Internet. So it's a little unclear exactly when this was created. According to Ahoy, they were able to trace the creation to March 3, 2000. So it's at least as old as that. It might have gone back a couple other years. And this is where the story of Polybius seems to have begun.

[Alice]

So not 1981, in other words, right?

[Brett]

Yes. The earliest reference to this you can find, that you can find now, people claim in the 90s there was discussion of Polybius on these sort of, like I said, what the Internet was in the 90s, so these message boards, Usenet groups, all that sort of stuff. You know, I can remember in the old days, you know, you dialed up to the Internet and you could dial up to certain boards, right? So if there was like you wanted to talk about a certain video game, there was a telephone number you could call on your computer and you would put it into your modem, it would call that number and it would connect in to that message board. And then you could talk, you know, to your friends about Tie Fighter or whatever. Right. Like that's what you were doing in the 90s. So if those discussions were happening, as some people claim they were, they would be lost. You would not have those. That is just lost media. Right. But the fact of the matter is, before 2000, there's no definitive evidence of this story existing. So February 2003. So basically, you have this coin op story. It's on Coin Op, and for about three years, nothing happens. But then there's an article that appeared on gooddealgames.com and it includes a screenshot of the title page, as well as a thanks on the bottom to the article to coinop.org so a few years pass, another article is written. It links back to that coin op. Then July 28, 2003, there is another article on insertcredit.com discussing Polybius.

[Alice]

So now we're in summer 2003, right? Polybius was mentioned in the gaming magazine Game Pro. These are, like, all over my house because my brothers played a lot of games in an article titled Secrets and Lies. And the publication outlined six gaming myths and deemed them true, false, or inconclusive. And Polybius was number six on the list. And GamePro deemed it inconclusive due to a lack of evidence. So this article propelled the Polybius urban legend into a more mainstream idea Amongst gamers, since GamePro is a pretty large publication at the time.

[Brett]

Game Pro was huge at the time.

[Alice]

So no, like, literally, they were all over my house.

[Brett]

Yeah, like, Game Pro, man. So I might have been a gamer my olden days. Right. So in the 90s, I was still in college in 2000, so I was still playing a lot of games. You know, Computer Gaming World was one that I got Game Pro, I had the Nintendo Power magazine back in the day. Like, love those things. Game Pro was huge. So when this story goes in Game Pro, millions of people are instantly exposed to it, and it starts generating discussion and people start having memories and thoughts and everything else, and they're thinking back to this story. So the fact that it goes to Game Pro, massive, right?

[Alice]

Absolutely. Especially because they don't say it's false. They say it's inconclusive. So now you have this mystery and people like, did I play this back in the 80s? I mean, now we're talking about, like, 24 years earlier. So that's not the only publication that starts talking about Polybius. August 21, 2003, on the heels of Gamepro Polybius was featured in a Slashdot article as well.

[Brett]

Slashdot was also big. These are all websites that none of you have ever heard of, really. There's the Internet before Google and there's the Internet after Google. Google just changed the game. I mean, there was Yahoo before that, but Google, I can remember being in school, in college and people mentioning this Google thing and being like, what? I don't know what that is, but, man, I mean, Google changed it after Google. The old Internet.

[Alice]

Ask Jeeves.

[Brett]

Oh, yeah, Ask Jeeves, exactly. You had Ask Jeeves. You had all the different. All the different browsers you could use. Like, I remember on Netscape and like all this stuff anyways, but really that was like the Wild west, the cool Internet, frankly. And then Google took over and corporatized the whole thing. Now we have the dead Internet. So that's where we are now. But it really was. Google changed the game, right?

[Alice]

So now this is catching fire, shall we say? So now we go to February 29, leap year 2004. Polybius, the video game was first mentioned in the external link section of the Wikipedia page for Polybius, the Greek historian. When you make it to Wikipedia, by the way, you know you've made it. There was a note that read, quote. Polybius is also the name of a possibly fictitious video game. In contemporary folklore related to Atari's Tempest, it legendarily led to mental illness in players. According to the possibly hoaxed title screen to the game, the manufacturer was Sinusloshen, German for sense delete.

[Brett]

So real quick on that. If you're in Germany, you're probably like throwing stuff at your computer. These stupid Americans and their stupid words. Sinuslochen. That's not a German word. What are they even talking about? And you're right, you're right. Germans, I give it to you this time, the sinus lotion is not actually a German word. So sinusloshen is what? Someone who is not a native German speaker, maybe a Czech, maybe an American, if they wanted to say something like mind eraser or sense delete or something like that, and they looked it up, they would get sina, right? And then, because all we all know, all German words are just other German words all put together, right? That's how the German language is developed. You take senna, you take slot, put it together, and now you have mind eraser, right? Well, the problem is that's not actually how German works. So sinus lotion is not a real German word. It is like a German mishmash. Like if you're German, you might understand what the person is trying to say, but you would also understand that they do not speak idiomatic German, if that is the word they're using.

[Alice]

And that might actually in itself give us a little clue into what's behind the senisloan Polybius urban legend. Now we're in Wikipedia, right? And it is kind of crazy. It's crazy that Wikipedia and these pages are obviously edited by anybody. I think there's like some amount of time it has to go by and then obviously someone else can edit it, but it is crowd edited. So on November 30, 2004, the Wikipedia page for Polybius the Greek historian, was amended to add a section for this arcade game game hoax. Now it's appearing on multiple pages of Wikipedia, which really just shows that it's reaching a broader audience. Now. It's not just some niche sort of small thing. We've been in gamepro Dot. We are now kind of in the big leagues. Now there are entries in Wikipedia acknowledging that there might be a game. We don't know for sure whether there ever was a game called Polybius. February 25, 2005, a Wikipedia page for Polybius, the video game itself was first published. So now no longer is it just an entry for other, you know, similar sounding names. But now Polybius the video game has its own Wikipedia page. So when something is of unknown origin, does it at some point kind of like the opposite of a tree falls in a forest, if enough people say it is something and enough Wikipedia pages are created, does it become fact? And what is the difference between fact and fiction anyways? In reality?

[Brett]

That's a great lead in to the theories on this because the question is, does this game exist? If it does exist, is it a government ploy to take over people's minds? Or is it just a game that maybe caused some issues or whatever? That's the question. What's fascinating about it is if it doesn't exist, then it is just a pure urban legend. It is a story that people came up with. And it's fascinating to watch this urban legend develop. It's just a sort of societal thing, right? I don't know where the hook hand urban legend came from. The legend that the two people, the guy and the girl that go out to the lover's lane and they're like making out in the car and the girl hears a scratching sound. She's like, what's that? The guy's like, it's nothing, you know, because he's more focused on what's going on inside the car than what's going on outside the car. So they sort of start back and there's another scratching sound. And she's like, what is that? He's like, it's nothing. And then another one even louder and she's finally like, we got to get out of here, you know. And he's mad, he's like, whatever, fine. And so he like throws the car and drive and speeds off. And they drive over to the, to the Sonic, we'll say the Sonic to get themselves, you know, diet cherry limeade. And when the car hop rolls up, they scream and drop the limates all over the place. Because hanging from handle of the car is a hook that's been ripped from someone's arm. And the story, you know, the crazed murder with the hook handed escape, one's gonna kill him, et cetera, et cetera, right? That's an urban legend. You know, it's a story keep you from making out. Exactly. It's to keep you from ending up being like the victims of the zodiac killer, right? I mean, murderers on Lovers Lane were real things. They happened. And so we took those stories, those real stories, and we turned them into these great myths, these urban legends that kids told each other. And Alice is right. And just like the Wolf in the Forest, Little Red Riding Hood, whatever it is, stories we tell ourselves to orient our lives and to protect us from the dangers that are all around us. Right? I don't know where that one came from. I can't tell you the first time that someone told the story of the hook hand. But if Polybius is an urban legend, you can trace its whole life. And I think that's fascinating. It's life from a post on a website to showing up in a print magazine, to having its own wikipedia page in 2005. And here we are in 2025 talking about it.

[Alice]

And here's the other thing that's very interesting about it. In addition to being able to map out its entire timeline, there are so many things that are being perpetuated online that are false, that could take off as urban ledgers, but they don't. So why does this one take off of all of them? Because there are so many posts out there. Just go on Reddit, right? There's fan fiction being written, there's even podcasts being made about. But this one, why did this one catch? What is it kind of like the hook hand? We can kind of say, okay, the hook hand. You know, trying to make sure, you know, walk the straight line, boys. And girls don't go to Lovers Lane, et cetera, et cetera. All the things that could go wrong in your life if you make an errant decision, you know, on those lover Lane nights. What is this meant to warn us of?

[Brett]

Well, you know, and it is amazing. I always think of Slender Man. A lot of you are familiar with Slender Man. Slender man, which. There is a crime about Slender Man. We should probably do it with Slenderman. There's literally a forum post and the forum was like, you know, post a photograph and tell a story about it. And so this guy had took a photograph of some kids at a playground and put the Slender man character in the background and wrote like a two sentence description of what was happening in the photograph. And that was one of a thousand photographs that people put up, like Alice was saying, but that photograph created a fictional character so powerful that people became obsessed by it to the point of killing people or trying to kill people in pursuit of satisfying this entity. So, yeah, I mean, that is, that is fascinating. We'll have to do. We'll have to do that case later on. It's been in the story recently, but it's the same type thing. Polybius, obviously no one's tried to kill anyone over it as far as I know, but same type of thing. So who started this legend? Is it true? Well, let's start with someone named Cyber Yogi. So Cyber Yogi, whose real name is Christian Oliver Windler, is often thought to be the person responsible for creating this urban legend. He is a German man who one time created a fake variant of the game Phoenix as an April fool's joke in 2000. So man after my own heart. So basically he's somebody who's made up jokes about video games before, he's active in the gaming world, and he was doing things like this at the same time that the story of Polybius first popped up and he had an interest in obscure video games. But there's a problem with this theory, as Ahoy points out in his fantastic documentary that you have to watch. Why would a native German speaker used to botched German to create the Sinisloschen name? It seems like if anything he would have come up with a real German name, that's what he was going to use. Or he would have come up with some English company that the name was off on. And you would think, frankly, if you were creating this and you wanted to make it fictional, it probably would be an English company because you, you want to tie it into the CIA, right? So the CIA creates some Shadowy company. And they're the ones who create this. So that's sort of an interesting question. And he'd already pulled off one prank that year, so it seems like it would be a little bit of overkill for him to do both of these in the same year, though maybe he is just prolific. Additionally, he admitted the Phoenix prank because he wanted the glory. Because wouldn't you want the glory? Right. Why wouldn't he do the same about Polybius? And I gotta say, this is the thing that I've never understood. If you pulled off something like this, wouldn't you want the world to know it was you? I often think about, I don't know, Alice, if you've ever seen. There was a broadcast, I think, out of Chicago and back in the day, you could, like, hijack broadcast. And so somebody hijacked the broadcast and did their own film. And they were Max Headroom. Max Headroom, who was like a character from the early 80s. And they took over the feed of this Chicago television station. You can find it on YouTube. And it's incredible, right, that they managed to do this, but no one ever took credit for it. And I always think I would want people to know I'm the guy who pulled it off, at least after the statute of limitations ran, right? I'm the guy. I was Max Headroom. And the same thing with Polybius. If you're somebody who pulled this off and you're already the kind of person who takes credit for the prank, wouldn't you do that here as well? And then the question is, what is his connection to get the page published on Coinop.org because that's a really important point. That was the start of this legend, and it wasn't like it is now, where you could just post anything. This would have been something that would have been controlled by the people who ran Coin Op and Cyber Yogi. Seems like he has no connection there.

[Alice]

Honestly, it sounds like he's a popular suspect of the origin of Polybius because he's German and people are like, senna sloschen German without people really recognizing that it's not a real German word. And also because he did pull off the other game, they're like, well, he knows how to pull off pranks. So maybe this is another one. Other than those two. I can see why people would try to put those things together and say, ah, he seems to be the likely candidate. But I think there are a lot of reasons, as Brett just said, where he's probably not the person. So who else do we have as the person who is the originator of this urban legend. Well, Kurt Kohler is often considered the creator of Polybius, the urban legend, since he operated the site where the myth first appeared. That makes sense, right? Like that's how you get on coin op.org In August 1998, Kurt Kohler took over coin op.org, the domain, and turned it into a games database. He also announced the addition of a German language version of the site. Now, Kurt had control over what appeared on the site. So many think that because he had that level of control, he may have received a tip about Polybius and created the story in good faith. But if this were the case, he willingly ignored the fact that there was no evidence at all that Polybius ever existed. So maybe the most damning evidence that Kurt Kohler created this legend was provided by the author of the 2003 Secrets and Lies article from GamePro, Dan Amrick. Now, Amrick confirmed, confirmed that Kurt was the first person to tip him off about Polybius and that he believed Kurt was just making it all up. Kurt was a developer and he would have had the skills needed to forge that screenshot of the game that we showed you. He was also familiar with the German language, though not fluent, probably just enough to basically have a German version of his website available. He also would have personally benefited from this urban legend, since it would drive traffic to his website and he would have an interest in getting GamePro, for example, to do an article about it, one of the largest publications for gamers. And then everyone would be going to check out this post on coinopt.org which would drive eyes to his website. Now, Kurt told the creators of the documentary that the entry was on the site before he took over, though, as we showed with the whole placeholder with dates, it doesn't seem to be the case, but you can imagine if he wants people to continue to think that Polybius is potentially real, he doesn't want to be found out, because the myth, the legend, continues to circle around his website and it benefits him.

[Brett]

And look, it's hard to say. He has responded to various people who've asked about this. He always says this was a legitimate post. He often says he won't say much about this other than the way the game is described was deliberate. And this has led some people to believe that in the description of the game in the original article, there is some sort of message, maybe through a Polybius cipher or something like that. If that's true, no one has discovered it, so hard to say. So look, maybe it's a hoax. Maybe these people made it up. Or one option is that Polybius maybe doesn't exist as Polybius, but it nevertheless is sort of a natural creation. It's not so much a deliberate hoax, but rather a collective, almost hallucination created by the confluence of two genuine phenomenon at the time that makes this whole story more believable. One is the effects of the game Tempest. So Tempest debuted in 1981, and it was an absolute revolution. It was created by Atari, and Tempest was the first game to use Atari's color Quadrascan vector display technology, which created a 3D playing field for a Space Invaders type game. Now, to give you sort of an idea about this, so there's raster graphics and there's this vector graphics. Raster graphics basically is what you see on a television, old school television screen. You have pixels, right? And so you use the pixels to create the image and the pixels move and that creates the game. Vector graphics are very different. Vector graphics are like. They're almost like laser based graphics. And everything is geometric shapes, straight lines, you know, squares, polygons, that kind of thing. It's not vector graphics. But I'm going to use this as an example for those of you from my generation, if you ever played Star Fox. So Star Fox was a Super Nintendo game, and it was completely different from other games because everything was made out of polygons. You're like flying a polygon ship, fighting polygon enemies. And it just looked very different because of that. That was a throwback to this vector style graphics, and it was unlike anything anybody ever seen. People will tell you that Polybius used both raster and vector graphics, which would be even more of a revolution. It's not unclear how that's possible that you could have both, but people will say that. Hard to say, but nevertheless, Tempest was the first of these big vector display games and it blew people's minds, literally. Tempest caused one user to experience their first migraine ever after playing. Another became sick after playing for 28 hours straight. Two more users died of heart failure after trying to beat the record for how long anyone had played the game. And then reports sort of across the board of various issues that people had from playing Tempest.

[Alice]

All right, guys, I know that I host a true crime podcast, but you also know if you've listened to me at all, how scared I get about the cases that we cover. And so it's no surprise that after we stop recording, I can't go to sleep at night. I think about True crime all night and I get scared. And no, sleep is not a good recipe for being able to function the next day. Enter Beam's Dream Powder because when it comes to solving the case of your sleepless nights, Dream is a lifesaver. When I found Dream, everything changed. I started sleeping through the night without tossing and turning and I woke up energized, not groggy. It's been a game changer for me. And Dream is made with a powerful blend of all natural ingredients, Reishi, magnesium, L theanine, apigenin and melatonin. It's designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up feeling amazing. And unlike other sleep aids, there's no next day grogginess, just great restful sleep.

[Brett]

And in fact, Beam has already improved over 17 and a half million nights nights of sleep, helping people across the country wake up and feel their best. If you're not getting good sleep, what are you waiting for? And we have a limited time offer for you. Here's the twist. Beam's giving our listeners an exclusive offer of up to 40% off their best selling Dream Powder. That's right, up to 40% off. To finally crack the case of your bad sleep, go to shopbeam.com prosecutors and use code prosecutors at checkout. That's shop beam b e a m.com prosecutors and use code prosecutors for up to 40% off because better sleep. That's the kind of mystery you can solve.

[Alice]

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[Brett]

Yeah, you guys know I don't like to wear a suit. Anybody knows me knows that I love a good sports coat and I got a great one from Quince. I look great, feel great and I know that I am getting a quality piece of clothing and you can get it to treat your closet to a little summer glow up with quints go to quints.com prosecutors for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quite inc.com prosecutors to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com prosecutors the prosecutors is sponsored by Better Help Guys. Mental health awareness is growing, but there's still progress to be made. 26% of Americans who participated in a recent survey say they have avoided seeking mental health support due to fear of judgment. And when people hesitate to get help, it doesn't just affect them. It impacts families, workplaces, and entire communities. I know a lot of you out there are feeling this too. Look, the weather's getting warmer, it's nicer outside, and you might think, oh, this is going to be perfect for my mental health. But what are you feeling? Pressure to go out, pressure to do things. You're seeing your schedule fill up. You're starting to feel the stress of the coming summer. Well, it might be that therapy is exactly what you need. And that's where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapist from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists with a wide range of specialties. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. And you can easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost.

[Alice]

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[Brett]

So what is part of the story? That people played the game, they became addicted, and they had these physical manifestations because of it. That's the first thing. Number two, remember the men in black who were showing up to look at the game? Well, I don't know if Polybius existed, but they existed because at the time, in the early 80s, I mentioned that moral panic. The FBI was very interested in arcades. And in fact, federal investigators were launching investigations into arcades across the country, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. They were investigating things like bootleg machines, but in particular gambling and drug sales. And these were all problems that were known to occur at arcades. So gambling, you can imagine how this would go. You're gambling on the game. You're gambling on the high score, whatever. The people running the arcade are essentially bookies, and they're making money off that. And then they're, you know, selling drugs in the back. Like I said, it's kind of like a casino. And who started the casinos in Vegas? The mob. So you have the FBI, who's very interested in this. And there were full scale raids of arcade halls. Owners were sentenced to stiff sentences based on what was happening. The FBI was using these arcade cabinets to install surveillance devices. So you would have seen men in black working on these arcade games if you were there at the right time. And the Tempest cabinet in particular, because it was bigger and sort of different from your standard raster graphics style, arcade games would have had more room to install this kind of equipment. So you have these two things coming together, and then you have a game called Poly Play, which was happening at the same time. The name Poly Play becomes Polybius, the idea of the men in black servicing the game. And then you have everybody with the seizures and everything else. So Polybius may not have existed, but what Polybius described did exist.

[Alice]

That was actually a pretty good breakdown of what this was. And that's the thing, right? Like, not all urban legends are necessarily nefarious. Yes, maybe someone created this to drive traffic, but it really took on a life of its own. Because it wasn't just one post that people referred back to and thought, this is such an interesting story. We had all these people collectively remembering this experience from the 80s. And here's the other theory, though. Maybe Polybius is real. Because Unlike today, in 2025, as we're recording in 1981, there wasn't a timestamp recording of every single movement of every one of our lives. Right. I can look down at my phone today and tell you how many steps I took. Literally every step is being tracked today, but not so in the 80s. It's very possible that this game existed for a very short time. You know, a month, didn't have only in one region of the country. So only, you know, a small subset of the population experienced it. But what they experienced was mind blowing and something that they still remember to this day. And it may very well simply be real, and we just don't have good documentation of it. So those are the possibilities of what it could be. Now, will this case ever be solved? So we've gone through the potential origins of where this urban legend may have come from, but I don't think we really have an answer. And we may never know the origins of this urban legend, but I think Theory number four is probably not right. I think we can determine that it is a hoax. Bragamarha. Sorry. Whether it was for nefarious reasons or whether it was for fun. Maybe it was a massive April Fool's joke that didn't happen on April 1st. And maybe it was just to see how far you could push a story. Because even though not everything was documented in the 80s, there's absolutely no evidence that this game has ever existed. Except for this screenshot of the opening screen of the game. No one has ever found one of these machines. And remember that story that I told you? There are people who truly go hunt down historic or very old 1980s arcade games and fix them up. Not a single one has ever been found anywhere. Not in a thrift store, not in grandma's basement, not in a junkyard. And there really is no proof that there was one ever. All we have is Internet speculation, mostly by anonymous handles that seem to all trace back to one article on coinup.org so cold water prosecutors here don't really think Polybius really existed. If you have been hanging on every word thinking, I'm gonna go find me Polybius and I'm going to play it and experience what Bobby Feldstein experienced, I don't think you're ever gonna find it.

[Brett]

I hate this podcast. I'm giving it one star.

[Alice]

I'm gonna five stars. Hate it.

[Brett]

I hate it. So here's the thing, you guys. I mean, look, I feel like we're viewed as sort of cold water people Alice has described a lot of times. Cold water thing. I though I'm like, I'm Scully and Mulder put together. Like, I want to believe so badly. I love these stories so much.

[Alice]

You do? And I want to believe Scully and Mulder put together.

[Brett]

I want to believe. But the thing that matters to me more than anything is I want to know what's true. And all the cases we talk about, all these people who think we have some sort of weird agenda, right? Like we meet in our secret prosecutor meetings in the bowels of, like, some temple or whatever, to discuss how we're going to lie to the world about various cases, right? And look, you can disagree with us on anything you want to disagree with us on, but just know when we say we think something, we absolutely think it, because that's the whole point. Like, I'm not here to try and convince you of anything. I just want to know what's true. I just want to know, did Polybius exist or not? I want it to exist very much. I want Polybius to have existed. I want it to have been some massive government conspiracy. I want it to break your mind. I want someone to kidnap me in the middle of the night and take me to a warehouse and say, I'm gonna let you play this game because, you know, you deserve to be able to be the one person who gets to play it. Then I get to play it and they take me back home. I want that to happen. It is unlikely that's going to happen. But I will say this. I'm going to make a very weak defense of Polybius. So do I think Polybius existed as a government conspiracy to control people's minds? Probably not. I think that's unlikely. Is it possible there's a kernel of truth in Polybius? Yeah. And I'll give you an example, and I'm going to use Alice, because Alice is completely disconnected from the world. So she definitely will answer this question exactly how I want her.

[Alice]

I am so disconnected from the world. I actually deleted all social media for lent, by the way. So if you haven't seen me, that's why.

[Brett]

So, Alice, that answers the question, who's posting on Facebook? So, Alice, I have a question for you. Is there a movie called Coyote vs. Acme? Do you know. Do you know the coyote in the. In the Roadrunner and the old admiring cartoons? Is there a movie called Coyote vs. Acme that was supposed to be released in the summer of 2023, that starred Will Fort, John Cena and Lana condor? They cost $72 million to make. Does this movie exist?

[Alice]

I have no idea.

[Brett]

So here's the thing about Coyote vs. Acme. Coyote vs. Acme does exist in one way. But at some point, Warner Brothers, for reasons that are controversial, decided not to release it. So it is a movie that was made that was ready to be released that had high profile stars, they cost $75 million.

[Alice]

Almost three quarters.

[Brett]

Yeah, three quarters of $100 million. That weird way to say that, right? Real movie. They destroyed the movie and they just made it a tax write off.

[Alice]

Why?

[Brett]

And that's very controversial, right? So in 25 years and 50 years, you know, people may look back and say, I saw Coyote vs. Acme. And people be like, what? Did that movie exist? Now, there's plenty of evidence that Coyote vs. Acme did exist and everything that happened I just described, right? But here's the thing. The coverage of these things is much greater now than it was in 1981, particularly of a obscure game. There are probably unknown numbers of games that were made as black Cabinets that were put in little places around the country that did market testing. And for whatever reason, that second story may not be true, but the notion of a 13 year old got sick and they decided to pull it. That could have happened or something like it. So I think it's possible that Polybius did exist, that the gameplay did look something like what has been described. I don't think it was super popular because that would have been why it was pulled. There wouldn't have been anything nefarious about it. But the kernel of truth there could have grown over time into this story that we have now. I think that's the best you can do for Polybius, but it's a possibility. And I think it just speaks to something that is fascinating to me about the human condition. 99% of the songs, of the music, of the stories that have ever been told in human history are lost forever. They'll never be told again, they'll never be heard again. They're just gone. And that fact permeates our society now it's a little less true. Like now everything exists somewhere, right? Because we have the cloud and everything else, but. But this notion of things coming into being and then disappearing and only a few people ever experiencing it, never to be experienced again, is real. And I think there's something poignant about that. And maybe that's what we can get out of Polybius, the sort of notion that there have been so many things that have been created that have been lost, and maybe Polybius is one of them.

[Alice]

And that's a great point. You know, I think about that all the time. There are all these influencers now from really our generation who grew up right before the Internet, right? Like, who grew up in the 90s and they're influencing the way they make money on social media is literally just to speak into truth, the things that we experience that is not documented, right? Like the whole mine is going to come from like a girl's perspective in the 90s, but like Trapper Keepers and things that if you dug far enough, you could probably find some documentation of it. Or like you'll see all these posts about all the snacks that no longer are made that we grew up eating. You know, like, you can't go to the store and buy those snacks, but when we see the cigarettes, like, yes, not allowed anymore. But you look at it and it triggers something deep within you because it strikes that emotion where, wow, I haven't seen this in so long. Never even thought about it until now. But the fact that I'm Seeing something that is accessing my childhood unlocks kind of all these emotions. And I think that's why these influencers take off. They don't do anything except, like, speak into existence the things that are now gone that we had somewhat forgotten. And there is some nostalgia in that, but also some wistfulness in really, the passage of time and how everything really is. This is bringing it back to, like, you know, Easter, you know, dust to dust. Right. Things. If you don't continue to talk about them, if they are not remembered, they flow through your fingertips, and then they are lost to the sands of time. And what is their import? What's the ripple effect on eternity? You know, there is probably some ripple effect, but how much? So when it has all been forgotten throughout history. And I did this tonight, so I read a lot of Sandra Boynton books, which is a baby board book. One of the greatest authors of our time. I truly mean this incredible books. But one thing that Sandra Boynton does is she writes these beautiful children's board books. And they're all rhyming. And almost all of them are meant to be sung, but the majority of them do not have, like, any music to them. There's no, you know, a couple of them, she has the music staff, and you could actually sing it to music, but they are all meant to be sung, and it's poetry. And my kids always demand that I sing them the book as opposed to just read them. And so I sing it, but because it's not really set to any song, it comes out different every time. And I think about how it's slightly different every time I sing it. And my kids know, like, Brittany will turn to me, she's two, and she'll say, no, no, because she's. I sang it slightly different than she remembered the night before. And I've looked at her and thought, you will be a grown woman one day. And you will think back, what was that song my mom sang me? And I, even if I'm alive, probably could never recreate it for her, even if I'm there, because I can't recreate it day by day. And there is some wistfulness about the human condition, like you say about the fact that we record our voices for this podcast, but even that is fleeting. What happens when all of these are destroyed or deleted in the cloud? There's a massive hack, power outage. No longer do our voices exist. And I don't know. It's a existential question to grapple with on a Friday night.

[Brett]

You got me all teary eyed over this video game. Oh, man. No, that's, that's so true. You know, I think about, there was a book, it wasn't that good. I didn't like it that much, but it's called Zone One and it was by. I forget his name, but he's like a, a Pulitzer Prize winning author or something. He decided to slum it and write a horror novel, write a zombie book called ZOM1. And it was fine, but there's one section that actually gets to what you're talking about. It's a zombie book. So there's been the zombie apocalypse. And there's a character who talks about how he doesn't have any pictures of his family because they were all in the cloud. And when the zombie apocalypse happened, the cloud went away and everything disappeared. And so like all this history just vanished. And that, that stuck with me. Like that was like, wow, that's a deep point. And I feel it's the same point you're making here. So there you go.

[Alice]

Deep thought, in other words. I know, I know throughout this, this episode because I was there with you guys when I first looked into Polybius, it's like, what's the point of this? Like, if this is a hoax, if this isn't real, why are we talking about this? And I think there are these overarching themes that go not only to urban legends, not only go to true crime, not only go into our lives. Is that what stories take flight? What makes them take flight? And what makes them take flight when it's pretty clear that they're not real? But we continue to tell these stories. We continue to tell the hook hand story, we continue to tell the choker story, right? You take the choker off and her head falls off. We continue to tell these stories even though obviously we know that her head didn't fall off. Like it's impossible to keep your head tied together with a choker, right? But we continue to tell stories because I think storytelling is, has always been the way that we pass on culture, the way we pass on beliefs, and the way we pass on history. I think it is stronger than, you know, even the written word because you look back, you know, paper disintegrates, even stone disintegrates over time. But the stories that we have truly runs throughout history, maybe in slightly different versions because there's the game of telephone. But we are the single voice that goes through all of history. So I think this is, that is the point. It is not just, you know, fun and games, but I Think it's a really interesting question to know why we tell the stories that we do.

[Brett]

That's beautiful. It's beautiful, Alice. I agree 100%. I hope you guys enjoy this and got the same thing that we did. You know, I always think about the first word of the Iliad. Sing. So keep talking. Keep talking to each other. Keep telling these stories. They're worth something. So anyway, well, we want to hear what you think about this. If you played Polybius, shoot us an email prosecutors podgmail dot com. Reach out to us on Twitter @ProsecutorsPod for all your social media. Join us on the gallery to discuss this in other cases. If you would like to watch us record these episodes, join Patreon. For as little as $3, you can do that. Or if you don't want to watch them, but you want to get them early and ad free, we do that as well. Want to thank everyone who joined us on this Friday night to record this episode. Well, we've got a little long, but do you want to do a question?

[Alice]

Let's do a question.

[Brett]

That's how much we love you guys. When you're listening to this will be.

[Alice]

Your second episode, you listen to Polybius.

[Brett]

Hey, Polybius is awesome.

[Alice]

Awesome.

[Brett]

I'm looking forward to doing this.

[Alice]

No, no, I'm saying you went on this journey with us of Polybius.

[Brett]

Okay, so Bella Paul says in every investigation you hear someone attest to the value of following the evidence. However, you also hear that they use the concentric circles approach. How are these two approaches not paradoxical? Well, I would say, number one, obviously, if you have the evidence, it leads inexorably to the person who did it from the very beginning. Great, just do that. Right. But I think the idea of the concentric circles approach is if you do not immediately know who did it and you don't have the DNA and the fingerprints or whatever else, that one way to find the evidence that you will follow is you start with the people who are closest to the person. Because statistics. You follow statistics. Right. And that's what we do in everything. Your whole life, most of the decisions you make are based on sort of probability. Right? That's how you live your life. Investigations are much like that, probability wise. If a woman is killed is probably her significant other, doesn't necessarily mean it is. But you start with them, you investigate them, and you see if the evidence leads to them. If it does not, then you move out other people who know them. The least likely person to commit a crime against you is a stranger. So you'll get to that last ring eventually. But I think think it's sort of a. One is an investigative tool. The other is the principle that should guide all investigations. So the concentric circles approach is the tool. Following the evidence is what you should be doing no matter how you're investigating a crime.

[Alice]

Great job. That's exactly right. And also, remember, it's easy for us after the fact to be looking at an entire case that has reached some sort of outcome to say, well, just follow the evidence, because the evidence is a breadcrumb. And you can follow, quite literally the trail through the story. You don't have that. Think of it as a literal blank page when you start an investigation, right? You haven't interviewed anyone yet. You haven't gotten DNA testing back. You haven't gotten cell phone dumps, cell phone tower dumps back. I mean, follow the evidence in a lot of. When you really follow the evidence in a real investigation, there are so many dead ends. And you come back and you go out and you come back and you go out. That's following the evidence. But follow the evidence, of course, is a principle that you always have to abide by. But it's easy for us to say post hocus. They should have just followed the evidence. It would have clearly led to suspect B. It's not that clear when you are starting from square zero with nothing in front of you.

[Brett]

And you know, it's easy to say follow the evidence. Right? Because as Alice said, when you're looking back, it's obvious what the evidence was. I mean, remember what you essentially have. It's not. You have puzzle pieces and you put them all together and form a picture. It's more like you take two puzzles or three puzzles or four puzzles and you mix them all together and then you're trying to find one picture, which means there's a bunch of information that you're looking at that will turn out to be extraneous. There's information that doesn't matter. There are questions that you always have that can never be answered. You know, I think back to Leo Schofield. We looked at the evidence. We think Leo is innocent. But there are people who can never get past the fact that his father found the body. Like, for them, that is just such a big piece of evidence that it must mean that either his father or he had something to do with it, right? They can't get past it. And to me, that is a coincidence. It is an extraneous piece of evidence. So follow the evidence. It has to be a little Bit more narrow than that. You have to think about each piece of evidence and where it leads. And so I think it's easy, as Al said, 2020 hindsight, but at the time when you've just had all those puzzle pieces poured on the table in front of you, figuring out what is relevant and what isn't takes a little bit of thought. And one of the ways to do it can be the sort of concentric way of looking at things or anything else. I mean, just as you get more information, you know, what information is relevant, what information isn't. You know, I had one case once where. And that second made fun of this. I don't know if I've told this story, but I don't normally tell stories that are, like, negative about myself. So if I've told this story before, I'm surprised, but I'll tell it again. So we. We had this suspect, and we didn't know who it was, and we had all this video of this person, and we're, like, watching videos from all these different sources of this person who was in disguise traveling through this particular area. And at one point, they. They disappeared off the video. And based on where they disappeared, like, I looked at the map, and I was like, oh, I know exactly what they did. They followed the train tracks, and they went up this way, and there was an RV park right there, and that's where they were parked. They followed the train tracks to the RV park, and they got in their car, and we need to get. If we get the video from the RV park, we're gonna find the person, you know? And I called up the investigators, like, I've got. I figured it out. This is how it works. And I gave them the whole thing. And they're like, okay, that's interesting. We'll look into that, boss. We'll take a look at that, you know? And I was like, no, no, seriously. And, like, the next day, they're like, so, by the way, we. It. We found where they went. It wasn't the RV park, but if you want us to look in the RV park, we can. I was like, no, that's fine. And every time I talk to the investigator, like, you don't want to spoil that video on the RV park. It's the same thing, right? Like, that seemed like based on the evidence I was looking at, this was a really good way to look at the case. Turned out I was wrong. I got more information, and it changed my perspective. So same thing. And. And that's how you have to look at it. Anyways, okay, Alice. Well, I've enjoyed this a lot. I hope you've enjoyed this too. No one I would rather spend my Friday night with than you. Do you have any other things you want to add before we sign off?

[Alice]

No, this was a nice. If you have ideas of cases you'd like to hear inserted throughout our other case that we're doing right now, let us know. We'd love to do cases like these. We love cases that are child appropriate, which this one is. So if you have ideas for those. There aren't that many in true crime. So if you have one, we'll. We'll probably do it.

[Brett]

And get urban legends like this. I feel like I've heard them all. Like I knew about this, but if you got a good one for me, hit me with it. I love this stuff, so we'll always cover it. Alright, guys. Well, we'll be back next week with more on the West Memphis Three. Congratulations to some of you. Sorry to the rest of you. But until then, I'm Brett.

[Alice]

And I'm Alice.

[Brett]

And we are the prosecutors.

[Alice]

Plugged everything. It's a little quiet. One second.

[Brett]

She sound good to me.

[Alice]

How is that? Okay. Okie dokie. Can you say hi to your dear children? Hello, my favorite children.

[Brett]

Hello.

[Alice]

That were not mine.

[Brett]

Sweet children. I hope you're being Good for Mommy.

[Alice]

Ms. Alice says hi.

[Brett]

Yeah, I told him this was. This was safe for children. So y' all be good and then go to bed when you're supposed to and I'll come down and see you later.

[Alice]

I'll be good.

[Brett]

Let's see. All right. You ready?

[Alice]

Oh, yeah.

[Brett]

Here. I'm running around downstairs.

[Alice]

Can you really.

[Brett]

Sam?

[Alice]

See, the urban legend has largely been perpetuated by the testimony of a man named Bobby Feldstein. Feldstein. I'm gonna go for Feldstein. The urban legend has been largely perpetrated by the testimony of a man named Bobby Feldstein. Did I say it again?

[Brett]

You said however you want to say it. It's also perpetuated. You keep saying perpetrated as if he's perpetrated.

[Alice]

I keep thinking we're doing, oh, I'm like, Bobby Feldstein, Feldstein. I can say it fine until I have to say it. Okay.

[Brett]

Sam, are you looking for your next case? Pluto TV has all your favorite crime dramas streaming for free. You're gonna need some backup, which means suspense is free. Very cool. Watch CSI New York, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods Tracker, FBI and swat. All for free. You can't outrun this. Someone is gonna pay for all this crime, but it's not gonna be you. Take care of business fellas. Watch all the cases, all for free from all your favorite devices. We got you. Feel the free Pluto TV stream. Now pay Never.

[Alice]

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