1. 80's Blaster Polybius Was A Government Experiment
Over time this little gem of a tale has gone from weird to all-out bat-poop crazy - but it's still a real humdinger. So it's 1981 in Portland, Oregon, and across many different towns and suburbs there appears this new game, Polybius, one that looks to essentially play like Asteroids, except you only shoot one entity in the centre of the screen and your movement is completely limited. It controlled like hell and sounded even worse, but with no company credits listed on the cabinet (this is the 80's remember) the really strange thing was the many stories of illnesses induced after playing that started cropping up. Teens would suffer from everything from headaches to general nausea, nightmares and insomnia, eventually succumbing to suicide in certain cases - all creating one hell of a rumour-mill that continues on to this day. In addition the only people that reportedly tended the machine at the time were figures dressed in black suits, opening up the foil hat-wearers to prod the Government Conspiracy button and suggest it was all some strange experiment on the innocent people of those respective towns. It doesn't help that there's no way of proving it right or wrong one way or the other, as the game wasn't even logged into any official record until 1998, the company behind it eventually traced to nobodies 'Sinneslöschen', and the name Polybius alone is also a Greek historian whose work dealt with rumours and the unknown. What are your favourite gaming urban legends? Let us know in the comments!
