As with all urban legends, depending on how long they have been circulating, once the groundwork is laid by the initial event, decade by decade more layers are added. Just like the amusing act of whispering something in one person’s ear, then passing the message down to another and so forth and so forth; what comes out at the end is usually very different from how it started. Such is the story of Polybius, a multi decade exercise in how legends begin and how they changed in passing.
According to the earliest Internet form of the legend, found in the archives of Usenet, a new game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon, in November, 1981. The Tempest-like game, reportedly called Polybius, allegedly created by the covert German company, Sinnesloschen, was an instant hit and popular with some players to the point of addiction. Eye witnesses claim Polybius was in a plain, black and unmarked cabinet.
Polybius, gaming’s oldest urban legend, is mostly Atari’s fault
Players, and exclusively young adult males and teens, gathered around the game, forming lines, with brawls often breaking out over who got to play next. Many of the more obsessive players suffered various side effects from playing the game, most notably memory loss, nightmares, paranoia, insomnia and catatonia with flashing images of words and phrases in their minds. Some players quit the game completely, with one purportedly becoming an anti-video game activist in a crusade against them.
Apparently the game’s program incorporated rapidly revolving kaleidoscopic puzzles, interconnected with numeric shapes and subliminal messages that deeply affected the consciousness of some players. We do not know. No roms have ever been recovered from the mysterious game. But one could generalize that the same theory applied in the creation of The Dream Machine by Ian Sommerville in 1961, a stroboscope believed to alter the brain’s alpha waves and produce trance-like levels of relaxation when used for extended periods of time, could have been used in another, more modern platform game. But unlike The Dream Machine, Polybius’ rotating lights and colors were thought to have been designed for a very different purpose, that being for “mind control”
Legend tells us that players felt as if they were no longer in control of their thoughts after playing the game, that they were still being prompted to think negative thoughts, many of them feeling they were of danger to themselves. One suicide is rumored and, depending on which version of the legend one hears – murder as well. No doubt someone got their facts confused with the unrelated 1983 mass murder in a Texas arcade which, curiously enough, occurred at a Malibu Grand Prix arcade as well.
Weeks after the alleged events in 1981 in Portland, Oregon, as the legend goes, Men in Black, the harbingers of Government activity, began to show up to collect some form of unknown data from the machines, allegedly testing responses to the supposedly psychotomimetic game. It was reported that sometimes the men in black could be seen going to the cabinets, inspecting them, sometimes taking out unknown parts and quietly walking away. Often times they loaded them up in trucks and transported them elsewhere. One day, it is rumored, they took all the Polybius machines away and they were never seen again.
The North American Video Game Crash of 1983
Atari is one of the most recognized names in the world. Since its formation in 1972, the company pioneered hundreds of iconic titles including Asteroids, Centipede, and Missile Command. In addition to hundreds of games created for arcades, home video systems, and computers, original artwork was specially commissioned to enhance the Atari experience, further enticing children and adults to embrace and enjoy the new era of electronic entertainment.
Despite success in the 70’s and early 80’s, Atari (and the rest of the gaming market) all took a turn for the worse between 1982 – 1983 when over-saturation of bad third party titles and gaming systems, rushed production, over-production, and new home computing options all led to what is called “the North American Video Game Crash of 1983”
The rush of the Atari version of Pac-Man for Christmas of 81′ was one of the first signs of the impending crash of 83′. NAMCO’s Pac-Man was one of the most popular arcade games. Atari was the most popular home system with about 10 million Atari owners.[5] What could go wrong with the first ever Pac-Man port to the home console just in time for Christmas? Everything.
The Events Leading up to the Video Game Crash between 82′ to 83′
The “suits” at Atari and Warner Communications were so confident that Pac-Man would sell that they ordered a copy for every Atari system and 2 million extra (for the 2 million who would buy an Atari just to play Pac-Man). If that seems insane, it’s only truly insane when paired with the actual story.
Tod Frye, the lone Tod Frye, produced the port of NAMCO’s Pac-Man. Warner (Atari’s parent company) choose to rush the release of Pact-Man for the 81′ holiday season before it was ready. This along with other factors, like Atari choosing to use a 4KB cartridge instead of the new more powerful 8KB cartridge to save money, led to a lackluster release. The end result was a rather unfinished looking Pac-Man, that while not unplayable, it simply didn’t look like the arcade version.
12 million units of Pac-Man were produced and rushed to the shelves. An impressive 7 million were sold (although many demanded their money back), but the end result was far less impressive. 5 million versions of the failed Pac-Man port in history sat in an Atari warehouse waiting to be sold in bargain bins around the world.
# | System | Release | Manufacturer | Type | Generation | Sales | As of |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
01 | Nintendo Color TV Game | 1977 | Nintendo | Console | First | 2,000,000 | 1979 |
02 | Atari Video Computer System | 1977 | Atari, Inc. | Console | Second | 1,550,000 | 1979 |
03 | Coleco Telstar | 1976 | Coleco | Console | First | 1,000,000 | 1976 |
04 | TRS-80 | 1977 | Texas Instruments | Computer | 8-bit | 450,000 | 1979 |
05 | Magnavox Odyssey | 1972 | Magnavox | Console | First | 367,000 | 1975 |
06 | Fairchild Channel F | 1976 | Fairchild Camera and Instrument | Console | Second | 350,000 | 1979 |
07 | Epoch TV Baseball | 1978 | Epoch Co. | Console | First | 230,000 | 1979 |
08 | Epoch TV Game System 10 | 1977 | Epoch Co. | Console | First | 200,000 | 1979 |
09 | Home Pong | 1975 | Atari, Inc. | Console | First | 150,000 | 1975 |
10 | NEC PC-8001 | 1979 | NEC | Computer | 8-bit | 150,000 | 1979 |
The other problem aside from the 5 million games in a warehouse, 7 million children spent Christmas morning with a bad Atari flavored taste in their mouths. This the first punch of the combo that would spell the end of Atari.
Between 82′ and 83′ even more systems, bad games (especially third party games), and new home computers starting showing up on shelves of about every retailer from Sears to the corner drug store. It’s understandable, the market saw the fastest growing business in the United States and wanted a piece of the action. However, due to the rapid expansion of the market, a lot of quality control went out the window. There was so much “junk-gaming” at this time it’s hard to cover all the events. Suffice to say, the rising popularity of video games was cut short by the increasing confusion and disappointment of the games and systems actually being produced.
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