Polybius Arcade Game (Rare 80s Arcade Game)

Polybius is a supposed arcade game that was released in the early eighties in Portland, Oregon. The game was described as a Tempest like puzzle shooter that caused health issues ranging from amnesia, night terrors, seizures, and even reports of people committing suicide. There were also reports of men in black taking data from the cabinets. A month after it's supposed release, the game disappeared. There is currently no evidence that the game even existed, but many have claimed to have seen or played the game.

Origin
The first documented reference to the game was an anonymously authored ingression integrated to the site coinop.org on August 3, 1998. The ingression mentions the denomination Polybius and a copyright date of 1981, and its "About the game" describes the "bizarre rumors" that make up the legend. The author of the ingression claims in the description to be in possession of a ROM image of the game, and to have extracted fragments of text from it, including "© 1981 Sinneslöschen". The remnant of the information about the game is listed as "unknown". No credible source has ever claimed to have visually perceived a ROM image for the game. Conflicting information is even circulated regarding the style or genre of the game. The 1998 material claims that it is "weird looking, kind of abstract, expeditious action with some puzzle elements". Others describe it as an action space-fighter. For some it has even been verbally expressed to be a shooter/puzzle game with some mazes thrown in, a coalescence of both.

Debunking The Rumors
Some speculate that the game grew out of hyperbolized and distorted tales of an early release version of Tempest that caused quandaries with photosensitive epilepsy, kinetics sickness, and vertigo. Author Brian Dunning notes that two players fell ill in Portland on the same day in 1981, one of them suffering from stomach pain after playing Asteroids for 28 hours in a filmed endeavor to break a world record, and the other collapsing with a migraine headache after playing Tempest at the same arcade. Dunning records that the FBI raided several video arcades in the area just ten days later, where the owners were suspected of utilizing the machines for wagering, and the lead-up to the raid involved FBI agents monitoring arcade cabinets for denotements of tampering and recording high scores. Dunning suggests that these two events were cumulated in an urban legend about regime-monitored arcade machines making players ill, and believes that such a myth must have been established by 1984, as it was referenced in the plot of the film The Last Starfighter, in which a teenager is recruited by a man in ebony who monitors him playing a covertly-developed arcade game.

Reports of the Games Existence
In 2011, a Polybius machine was purportedly found in a Newport, Oregon capacity locker. An anonymous individual said that the diversion was conspicuous from its "name as an afterthought of what resembles an old Pac-Man amusement." The diversion allegedly vanished not long after its presence was uncovered.

Popular Culture
Despite any evidence of it's existence, the game has been featured in an episode of The Simpsons called Please Homer, Don't Hammer 'Em. It was also featured in the movie Wreck-It Ralph and an issue of Batman.