In Portland, Oregon in 1981, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs, something of a rarity at the time. This game was called “Polybius”. The game proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and queues formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects — amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and suicide appearing as having been caused by the game in various versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist.

Alternate Story
Polybius is an urban legend about a rare arcade game released in 1981. The game was created by a mysterious company called Sinneslöschen (German for “Sense Deletion”) and was a puzzle/shoot-’em-up somewhat like Tempest. It was only released in a few suburbs of Portland, Oregon.
It was supposedly very popular, with people forming long lines to play it. However, players reported strange things about the game, such as hearing a woman crying and seeing grotesque faces out of the corner of their eyes. Players would also have nightmares, experienced nausea, headaches, blackouts or even develop amnesia. Some even committed suicide. Others stopped playing video games altogether and at least one became an anti-video game activist.
According to one owner of an arcade, men wearing black suits would often come to collect “records” from the game.
They did not take any money, simply data on gameplay. Because of this, the leading theory is that it was some sort of government experiment using subliminal messages. The game remains in obscurity as around one month after its release, all of the cabinets suddenly disappeared. One cabinet reappeared in an arcade 1998, but quickly disappeared again. While some have tried to recreate the game, no one has ever found the original ROM.
Sinneslöschen
The game can be found available for download at the Sinneslöschen website.
In the Media
Since its urban legend flowered into the phenomenon that it is now, there have been many alleged sightings of the Polybius game, as well as a few short videos about it.
The Screenshot
As seen in the only screenshot, it says “Sinneslöschen”. Thanks to Google Translate, it means “sense delete”. Possibly this could explain the amnesia.
Credit: Anonymous
More classic Creepypasta stories can be found here:
Licking
Gateway Of The Mind
Herobrine
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Polybius is an interesting idea, and I honestly like the idea of the myth, but this story was far too bare-bones and bland for my liking. It just feels like someone quickly compiled the basis of the myth for a story instead of actually doing anything unique with it.
3/10, would not dine on pasta again.
Wow. That was a Great Creepypasta. It was made by Nintendo? Wow, Nintendo sure is Weird. Want Proof that They are Weird? Go on YouTube and Search up “Why Mario is Mental”. WARNING: Do not Watch it if you are a Huge Mario Fan. Well anyway, 8/10
The gist of this pasta is actually true, the government formed a project to in the field of psychological understanding by creating this game called Polybius and it had weird effects such as delusion, suicide etc. Google it!
Of course there is a game called polyobous I mean like my dad knows this really cool arcade and it has polyobous and he played it so he wanted to show me it so we went but this guy the owner of the arcade named lesause said they took it out cuz the game had so many complaints freaky deaky right?! – – –
Actually guys I mean I believe the legend after all they say if you pay attention you could really get hypnotize so yeah I think the legend is true but if its made by the government then u know it has secrets like I had this sister her name is elvira and she heard of this story about polyobous and she works for the government and so she went and asked them If its true and this government guy said YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THAT and she was all like geez lol and so yeah I think the legend is true
I don’t get it
666 votes cast….
This seems like the beginning of a story but just gets cut off suddenly.
m friend has this game on his laptop. we played it for over 3 hours. I don’t get the point of the game.
Your copy+paste skills… They are amazing!
._____.
This story would be good, if it wasn’t copied and pasted from Wikipedia.
this is not true
It’s not like I saw POLYBIUS in the simpsons, researched it and wrote an article of my own…..and then stumbles on this article…
http://the-bored-gamer.tumblr.com/post/33167405880/polybius
” while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist ” HOLY CRAP. O_O now THAT’S scary..
I know it’s real because I first heard about this on cracked. They even said that these symptoms we’re also associated with the game. In one episode of The Simpsons when bart plays triangle wars in the arcade, You can see a polybius machine right beside the triangle wars machine.
Yeah, I heard of it on Cracked too. Reading this, and a few comments, I’m like, “It’s not true?” Cracked is mostly true, but I don’t know for sure.
Can someone please explain this to me?
yes… Polybius exists… Here I am http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQYvagB-ge4&NR=1
Didn’t really like thz 1, personally, i prefer pacman… omna omna omna omna
Actually, Jack Thoupson grew up in Cleaveland, Ohio and then went to Florida to practice law. There’s never been any big occurance in his life when he went to Oregon. Sorry, but after a bit of research, the pasta failed to make me shit a brick. Better luck next time.
No… NOT THE GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@brix: a miserable pile of secrets.
@-@
Search Polybius on Youtube. I think it was a real game. Freaky.
#2 – I know how you feel. I was like, “Yay! Portland!” and it turned out to be lame.
OMFG a remake download
….
WHO WAS MAN?
okay, i have to say this. WHO WAS GAME?
Polybius is interwebanese for World of Warcraft.
I live in the right city, I downloaded the game that was created in the image of what people think Polybius would be like, and am in the process of building a arcade front for it.
Ah, the life of a geek with nothing better to do.
This this story is like “The Killing Joke” for Jack Thompson
I heard of Polybius, never played it though obviously xD.
I’ve only heard of the legend.
I remember seeing something about this. Maybe it was on G4 TV when they were promoting the king of kong.
The smae exact things were said to have happened but I don’t know if it was true or if the urban legend became stated as fact.
Isn’t this SCP-034 dialed down a bit?
Was the activist Jack Thompson by any chance?
This is one of those stories that is just crazy enough to be true. Bravo to whoever wrote this one.
I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
@ royal-sovereign
i’d buy the book where is it?
I want to play it D:
well you can there is some page where you can download it http://www.sinnesloschen.com/1.php and here is the link
or here http://theisozone.com/downloads/pc/windows-games/polybius/ this one works for me the other don’t so just try yourself, after 10 minutes of playing your head starts to hurt and your vision is blurry so yea don’t play too much and rest a lot
D: ikr! it’s seems awesome D: i want one for my house :3 im already insane so xD won’t work :P
God this is a true story.
Oh shit. This one’s from my city.
But it’s BORING. How sad.
This is actually a half-true story. Polybius was a game created by/for the Government and their test on human…get this… MIND CONTROL.
Yeah, I got my inspiration from that wiki article, actually…fascinating shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(game)
I had no idea it was this popular (the legend, that is)!
And once again, Creepypasta.com proves informative.
I totally wrote a short-story about this.
Published it on Lulu.
There’s finally one from my state and it’s about video games?
Lets go Oregon!!!!$$!$ home to me!!!$!$!$!! still a good story though. Only wish they explained it a little more it could have been better. Anyways LETS GO PORTLAND
Oregon!! Weeeeeeoooooooo
took me a few seconds but i got it, lol.