Thinking Sideways: Polybius

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
of our new episodes, you're gonna notice that we're sounding
a little different in these ones. Yeah, there's a reason
for that. There is they've been remastered. They have been
remastered because they had a really annoying hum. Yeah, I
mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost

(00:21):
all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice
if you had listened to what we're calling the last
twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the
music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone
back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a
little different today than we do in what you're about
to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't

(00:46):
under say you never know the story is of things
we simply don't know the answer too. Well. Hey there,
and thanks for joining us again. And this is Thinking
Sideways the podcast, and I am Steve, as always joined

(01:08):
by and this week we're going to take on yet
another thing that I don't quite understand. Yeah, well this
one I don't quite understand. Because ladies and gentlemen we
haven't quite gone in this territory before, but we're gonna
do it anyway. Is what a lot of people believe
to be an urban myth? Yeah, and it's hot. Well

(01:34):
this one when you when and we'll get into the
details of it in the name of but when you
get into a lot of things on the net, it
seems like you find a pretty solid opinion one way
or the other. It's you know, oh, let's real or
oh no, total urban myth. Even Snopes on this one
is said, oh no, this is a total urban myth.
Except my problem is as I read it, I thought that,

(01:55):
and then I came across some details it started making
me think that maybe there's and gems of truth in it.
So what the heck we're going to run down that road.
I'm really this is like opening up new territory for us.
This is like nothing like we've done yet where show
has gone before, but this show has gone before. I

(02:16):
listened to that, so no show ever, So no show
has ever done this before. Awesome. Yeah, all right, Well
tonight we're going to talk about Polebius. If you wait,
like the Greek philosopher. No, no, no, no, not that guy.
Polebus which is supposedly a arcade game that came out

(02:37):
in We're going to step into a little time machine
here because not everybody understands this, and we're going to
go back to one. And when you played a video game,
you had to go to an arcade because they were
the stand up machines. It was pinball and stand up
arcade games. There's almost no home video games. Hardly anybody

(03:00):
out a home computer. Well in Atari had been I
don't even know that the Atari gaming system had come out.
If it had, it was still in its infancy. They
were really expensive. They were very exc and to hook
it up to your TV to have a TV that
was compatible with something like that also crazy expensive because
on tube TVs did not have a bazilion ports on
the back well, and they also were they weren't digital,

(03:22):
so you had to get a demodulator and or modulator
or whatever to you could actually interface those things. But
you had to buy this box to do it with.
Some had It was kind of fuzzy and crappy looking too. Yeah,
so it wasn't easy to do. Playing video games meant
you had a roller cords in your pocket and you
went down to the arcade that's just how it happened.
I remember many a time begging money off of my

(03:45):
parents could have a couple of books so I can
go play video games. Yeah, yeah, go go. I mean
that's just the way to So we're gonna talk about
Polebous and let's go ahead the story. Because it's considered
an urban legend or an urban myth, there are all
lot of variants and versions of it out there, and
I'm gonna do my best to try and wade through those.

(04:06):
But let's just get the basic story to start with,
and then we'll build from there. All right. So, according
to this story, an unnamed arcade here in Portland, Oregon,
in one got a new game one or was it several?
I heard it was several, you you just right off

(04:28):
the bat. I've heard both ways. I've heard it was
one arcade. I've heard it was multiple arcades in this city.
I've heard that they were all in the suburbs. And
I've heard that there was a couple that showed up
in other towns on the other side of the country. Yeah,
and we should, you know, make a point of saying this.
It was like an unknown game, but that was really rare.
Then I mean, you know, if you were going to

(04:48):
get a new Arcade game, you were telling everybody about it.
You're saying, oh, yeah, we're finally going to get this.
You know that you kind of you wanted to build
hype around it. Yeah. But I also got the impression
that this might have been a beta test situation. If
they only build a certain number of game cabinets, then
that would explain, you know, well, we've just got to

(05:08):
try it out and see how it does, and then
we'll take it back to the shop and and make
our changes and then do our big marketing dump. Probably
not a bad idea to just sticks them out there
and see how people like him or not. I guess
I just feel like, I mean, even at that in
beta testing, you as an Arcade kind of say we're
getting this beta. You know, the amount of people that
would come out for this thing. You say, this is

(05:30):
one of four units in existence. Come play this game
before anybody else, you know, So to have it just
kind of appear mysteriously is is like the first little
question mark exactly exactly. Uh so let's keep going here.
It turns out this game was super popular and from

(05:51):
many accounts, almost addictive. People were lining up, playing it
like mad NonStop, and at least one arcade, according to
these accounts of it being released, the owner of that
arcade said that he noticed, and I'm using air quotes,
men in black hanging around, watching the players, watching their reactions,

(06:15):
going to the machines, not collecting money, but doing something
on the inch side of the machine, and then walking away,
which is weird. Well, you know, and I gotta say,
I really have a hard time believing that, because I mean,
are you really going to send some guys like, you know,
with porked by hats and black suits and skinny times

(06:36):
to an arcade full of teenagers and people? I mean,
come on. And of course this is a government, so maybe.
But still throughout history you get these reports. A lot
of conspiracy theories or urban legends have these like mysterious
men in black characters, and I think that it's often
used as a term, not as like an actual description,

(06:57):
so as possible, yeah, that these guys were actually casually dressed, Yeah,
and it could be that they just they weren't in
jeans and Randy T shirts and yeah, thirty five year
old FBI agents, you know, in sweatshirts. Yeah, I picture
the like Steve Bushemy as a teenager in that episode

(07:19):
where Steve Bushey plays a um personal investigator private eye,
and he says something about, you know, he was doing
an undercover thing in high school, and its just like
it just like you know, shows him in a high
school like literally just Steve Bushemy, but like wearing kids
clothes with skateboard like hey dudes, and dude debts like

(07:40):
what are we doing tonight? So I feel like that's
like also totally feasible men in black, right, It's just
like dudes who are like, oh no, we're thirteen, clearly
in their thirties. Yeah no, no, no, I chaved my
hair this high up on my fore Yeah no, I
diet gray man. It's cool, but it could have been.

(08:02):
It's not necessarily been men in black, but just men
from the corporation that built these things. Yeah, I just
want to see what it could be, some kind of
businessmen of some kind. Again, this is as with this,
it's rife with possibilities for plausible reasons or yeah, if
you've built these machines, you've got them out there for
testing purposes to see how people like them. It makes

(08:23):
sense to go by the arcade and just see what
what people are doing. You absolutely, so this is where
things go a little sideways. No pun intended for this
particular show. Uh So. Evidently, according to the allegations in
the multiple versions that you come across, the machines were

(08:46):
having psychoactive effects on players. So they were they were
having amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, suicidal tendencies like all this
easy behavior. I feel like it should also be mentioned
that in every account that happens, right, that's consistent throughout

(09:07):
almost every account it is, except here's here's why I
don't put a lot of credence in It's in every
account because the order of those things written is always
is always identical. It's abc D. You think there's a
little cutting and paste going on there, Yeah, a lot
of that on the internet. But again, and this is

(09:28):
this is one of the things that makes me scratch
my head is how did they find out that these
people suffered from, say, amnesia. That's a very good question, dude,
I don't I don't know where I am. Where am I? Well,
I'm missing ten dollars in quarters where I don't know.
You know, you know, the crowd, the crowd pulls the
kid away, right, because they're like, they all want to
play the game too. It's finally he's died like a

(09:49):
million times in a row and he like wakes up
from a trance and it can't remember doing it. That's
I mean, quantifiable reportable asia. Right, Yeah, that's absolutely possible.
Insomnia ssomnia. Again, it's a it's a kind of kind
of a tricky one. Unless they did interviews with these
with these kids, I assume that these are all just
like accounts, right, like kids being like I couldn't sleep

(10:11):
last night. That game is messing me up or whatever.
Absolutely correct. So here's where things really go bad is,
according to the story, it was the game was pulled
out of the arcades within weeks of having been installed
because one player of it's supposedly a boy, had an

(10:35):
epileptic seizure from playing the game, which might not even
be related to the game. I mean, maybe he was
just you know, just passed out. Yeah, it's possible, and
we'll get into some descriptions of what happens on screen
as to why it could have caused a seizure. But
it's you know, it's believed that basically he had a
seizure and whoever made the game just in a panic

(10:58):
pulled it and disappeared, and it's going there's there's never
been a cabinet, you know, physically inspected, and people like,
look right here, this is plevious. We've got it. There's
some photos on the net. Again, we're gonna get into
some of that stuff, but the story itself is really
the main basis we've got to operate from. Yeah, but yeah, no,

(11:23):
that's that's one of the reasons I'm kind of doubting
this story, just because the people that made this thing.
I mean, you know what what somebody would have held
onto it a souvenir or whatever, um you know, or
maybe all of it. Some one of those machines should
have showed up on eBay by now if there were
like seven, right, I mean you assume if if you

(11:45):
have decided as a game manufacturer, no, we're pulling this
for good. Right, they made their cabinets, but the cabinets
all kind of looked the same, and if they are
making other games, they either repurpose it or are motherboard
in it. And the way you go, because I think
that saves a lot of money on yeah, I mean

(12:05):
it would, but you know, and I'm assuming if these
were prototypes, they were probably in generic boxes. But the
thing is, somebody would have saved all the guts and
they would have shown up somewhere. Like one time, for example,
I bought it. I bought an Asteroids machine years ago,
and it was this guy who had everything but the box.
He had like the power supply and the motherboard and

(12:26):
the control ward and the monitor and everything except the
box the cabinet, and I bought it from this guy,
and I played Asteroids for years on this thing. I
built a crude box to put it in. So somebody,
you know, somebody still has those guts somewhere if the
game ever existed. Maybe, I guess. I just think that,
like if if you have a game that causes seizures
and maybe a bunch of other stuff, you maybe just

(12:49):
destroy it. I mean, again, you want to recoup your cost.
You repurpose it, like you said. So it's it's hard
to say, but again you real story says that this
happened in the story itself didn't surface until August, so

(13:12):
that's what Seventeen years later, suddenly the story just pops
up on the Internet. The story comes up on a
forum which is coin op dot org, which evidently is
a big gaming forum. I looked around a little bit
on it, but I'm not a forum guy, so I
didn't really know what I was doing it. It's a forum,

(13:33):
not a repository of any kind. Again, I'm not positive
it might be. I think that in the reading like
coin op got bought by somebody else, and so I
think that, like the old archives are held, I wasn't
clear and I couldn't get a direct line aside. Well,
and to be fair, you know, the Internet is way
different than the Internet now, and you know, I think

(13:55):
it's likely right it may have been a forum, but
they're just like really basic forums. But I guess the
impress and I kind of have, is that it's just
like a repository of Rom's Basically, you know, you download
the game you want to play, and you just play
it on your computer. That's well, though, I got the
impression that coin op was originally basically a BBS old
school BBS. Again, I don't know, but here's here's what

(14:17):
happens is this original story comes out. There's almost no
information about the history of the game. They just say
that it's a space shooters slash abstract puzzle game. It's
named after a Greek historian Um and I mean, honestly,
it doesn't lend itself to a whole lot of credibility

(14:39):
right off the bat. From that, and everybody on the
Internet from day one has ripped this thing to shreds,
and that's continued to happen. I mean, if you do,
ladies and gentlemen, if you go out and you search
for information on this game and you type it into Google,
you're gonna come up with a gazillion hits on it.
And you're gonna find people who say it's fake. You're

(15:01):
gonna find people who say it's real. You're gonna find
some guy who says it's he's got it in his
mom's basement. I mean, it's everywhere. Okay, well, the forums aside.
Let's and let's just walk through some of the details
that have been put out out there. And again I'm
putting air quotes around the word details. But the things

(15:21):
that I have found that people say about the game,
and we'll start with how does the game work? Is
the game? It's the game. That's kind of the first
thing is there's some conflicting data on that too. Oh yeah,
there's data all over the map on every point that
I'm gonna bring up in here, and that's that's the
hard part. And bear with us, folks, because there are

(15:42):
some things that we are hanging on till the end
that maybe tie some of this together. But okay, So,
according to the information that I've come across, the game
was either a an action puzzle game that had a
rotating three D puzzle that had it had logic puzzles

(16:02):
in it, and it had a maze built in it,
kind of like do you remember pac Man, the original
pac Man, how you had to run through the maze.
That's what they mean by a maze. Um not you
know in these new games where your your first person
shooter going through these crazy mazes where you can only
see ahead. Yeah, we're still probably look at graphics and

(16:23):
very simple. It's absolutely simple graphics. The second b is
that you're flying through a tunnel and you have to
dodge things that are in your path, and as you
get farther through the game, things start going faster and
lights on the screen began to flash, almost in a

(16:44):
strobing effect. So not like that. One that reminds me
a lot of um Space age and Dragon Quest or whatever, right,
that like stuff and Dragon Slayer. Yeah, Dragon Slayer that
where you like just go through and dodge stuff. We're
talking something like that. Are we talking, No, we're talking.
We're talking generations before that that came out much later.

(17:06):
We're talking about more of you know, it's you've got
a T junction head and you've got to hold the
joystick to the left until you get to that junction
and then it's upper down right. I think that this,
like the graphics on the screen maybe are rotating that
this is this is my gas. This is kind of

(17:27):
almost three D graphics. It's in some of the some
of the stuff that I came across most video games
of the time. If you think of everybody's seeing Super
Mario Brothers and the original arcade of Super Mario Brothers
or Donkey Kong, and they were in raster graphics, which
is just little pixels that turn on to paint an image, right,

(17:49):
little bit images. Well, there is discussion that Polybius was
a vector graphics game, which is more along the lines
of if you remember, like you said, Joe Asteroids. Uh,
there was a game and we're going to talk about
later on, but battle Zone battle Zone is what I
was thinking of, because that was also Antari game, which

(18:11):
came out not too long after Asteroids, and that was
actually a three D game. Yeah, and if if you
haven't heard of any of these games, take a minute
and just do a Google image search and you'll see
what we mean by simplistic line graphic work and vector graphics.
And this is kind of a computer thing in terms
of how things work. But vector graphics are smaller and

(18:32):
easier to render than rester would be. So if your
game can do these in vector, then it's faster, especially
with the processor in one which is compared to today's
standards a snail, it's going to be able to go faster,
which is going to be revolutionary for anybody. They've never
seen this happen before, so I've heard discussions that it

(18:55):
was some experiment to use the vector graphic form. If
that's right or not, I don't know. So we're not
talking like just an animated sequence, because that's all that
like Space Age was was really. I mean, in terms
of programming, it wasn't much more complex than pac Man
or anything like that. It was just that they had
done these like full animated scenes. So we're talking like

(19:18):
like really basic, extremely basic. Again, Pong was kind of still,
you know, the grandfather of all of these games at
that time. I'm still waiting for the movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

(19:39):
Another game that was kind of vector based, and this
comes up in the research saying that maybe this was
based upon it is Atari put out a game called Tempest,
and I know that we watched the video of how
Tempest works, which is, you know, it's vector graphics and
you're kind of sliding around the edges of a maze,
avoiding things and shooting stuff. People say that it could

(20:01):
have been based on that, or a beta version of that,
because Tempest, according to everything, came out about four to
six months after this supposedly hit Portless. So now the
image that I have in my brain is you know
in Star Wars when he like has his like like
a little guiding thing come down or he's like gonna
do and it's like that there, Yeah, when he's in

(20:23):
the trench. That's now in my brain, and that's that's
that's basically what the graphics. Yeah, that it's that level
of sophistication and it's moving quote unquote right past you
and I guess if that were going fast enough and
you're trying to dodge things and there were lights flashing
at you. Okay, I'm getting a good picture here. Yeah,
sounds like a fun game. And none of these games

(20:44):
that we've talked about so far are anything that would
give someone a seizure. But I did watch and I
know again I put this up, and I know you
guys have watched it. There's a current game out there
was that Super Hexagon. It's a game that basically flash
is and your everything's rotating and spinning. If it was
in line with that, And again, ladies and gentlemen, you

(21:06):
might want to google this. You might want to kind
especially pause this, go watch it for a minute and
a half and then come back to us. Actually, for anybody,
if if you do have epilepsy, you probably don't want
to go to watch that one because that would be
a bad thing. Yeah, everybody else go look, so welcome back. Yep.
That was crazy to watch. I know now you kind

(21:29):
of get how somebody could have a seizure because it's
not easy to watch that stuff flashing around. Yeah, and
then imagine playing it like you're just passively watching it.
Imagine like trying to be in charge of that thing. Oh,
I would imagine that you'd be like seasick after a while. Yeah,
I can't. I can't imagine that going on. It's not
just watching it makes me dizzy. Yeah, So let's let's

(21:50):
move forward into the actual person. Polibius the Greek historian. Yes,
because the name of game is based upon a real person,
and Polybius lived the actual guy. He was a Greek historian,
lived in two sixty four to one forty six b c.

(22:14):
He was a historian. He had some views on how
things should be recorded, which is fine. But really, what
I like about this guy, and I didn't really know
about it until I started doing the research, is he
was one of the first He came up with an
early cryptographic system to use for communications over long distance.

(22:34):
So it's called the Polebia square. And what it is
is you take a grid of five across and five
down and you start in the upper left hand square
and you put A B, C, D, and E, and
then you go down in the next line and there's
twenty six letters in the alphabet. So he combined I
and Jane in the same one. Yeah, if you're communicating

(22:56):
over a long distance. You can use flashes of some kind,
and you know that the first number is going to
be the top of the grid and the sex second
number is going to be on the vertical access of
that grid, and then you put them together and you
know it's B and then E and so want to
and you can build sentences so that great distances, which again,

(23:18):
I mean, it would have taken me a week to
write over there, but it took me an hour to
transmit the message using Flare, much simpler, So I thought
that was cool. I don't know why he's referenced. Maybe
it's because of the fact that this is supposed to
be some kind of puzzle game. But I couldn't really

(23:39):
make the tie together myself. Didn't They say on one
account of it that it was like a rotating square.
That was like, yeah, yeah, so maybe it was a
reference to that. But the other reference that I was
thinking about was that he was also besides being a cryptographer,
he was an historian, and one of his things was

(24:01):
he felt that any historian should never put anything into
the historical record without actually interviewing somebody and finding out
if it was true or not. You know, what do
you think about it? It might be, you know, like
like this whole thing, this whole story exactly exactly. Oh man,
So okay, already even in the name, right, we're like
we've got two different directions, right. I have found a

(24:23):
way that this reference is what the game is, and
it totally makes sense. And Joe has found a way
totally discount the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, somebody was somebody
was playing a joke, and and and the name of
the game is itself part of the joke. It's a
broad hand as to you know what this story is
all about. Really well, and that's that's a great segue
into the next bit of data that I want to

(24:44):
go into, which would be who made the game. We
never know. We we don't know who made it. A
Tari and Sega. We're kind of the big boys on
the block when it came to video games at this time.
They were the superpowers. They also would have been the
ones that would have had the resources to say, here's

(25:06):
seven boxes, let's call beta testamon or and to develop.
I mean, they had the R and D money they
were creating all of these games, so they totally had
the money to just as opposed to a small indie
label that's just going to do the one thing that
they know work. And plus they had the money to
sand x marines and sweatshirts around to watch the Yeah,
that's exactly right. So there's a lot of conjecture that

(25:28):
one of these two major labels made it. There is
a image going around on the Internet of the title
screen of the game, and actually, I'll be honest, I've
seen three different images of the game. I've seen the
title screen, I've seen a black and white of the
cabinet itself, and I have supposedly seen images of the

(25:56):
City of Portland's what is it the licensing stickers for
it to be put into an arcade and play. I
feel like I want to see these pictures. Also, I
want to talk to the person who licensed, did you.
I wasn't even aware that you have to have a
license like a licensed stick so people don't have eplectic fit.

(26:18):
I have seen stickers on games. I'm assuming it's licensing. Again,
here's the problem. I don't know if it's from this game.
I don't even know if it belongs to a video game,
and I don't even know if they're real. I've just
seen these. But I've got to go to an arcade
and arcade now and check out the machines, because I'm
not finding what. Yeah, there's I know, I know the city, like,

(26:42):
you know, they licensed things like cigarette machines. I know
they do that kind of stuff, But I'm not sure
about arcade games. I mean, actually, I wouldn't put it
past them. You know what, I've seen stickers on games.
It looks like they're they're officially issued. So I'm presuming
that at least in this city that happens. But I
don't know exactly what they're for. But what I'm saying
is that I cannot say these real because they're the

(27:04):
same three ones over and over people have tried to
check for photo shopping and all this stuff. The title
screen of Polibius, it is eight bit graphics, so it
is from that era. It looks like it's from that era.
On the title screen there is a name from a company,

(27:26):
and Joe, You're gonna have to help me out with this.
How do you how do you say this German? And
in German that means deletion or a rature of senses,
as in your senses of the world. So actually I
think sorry, okay, okay, So there's there's that, but there's

(27:53):
no record of this company. We don't know who this
company is. Nobody can find them. They don't seem to
exist currently, and there's no records of them, you know,
putting out other games or anything like that. So I'm
going to find my German dictionary. But I can, I can.
I'm guessing right now that this word means men in
black or give him a conspiracy. I'm not sure one

(28:17):
of the other. There is another direction that we can
take for who created it, which is there supposedly is
a guy named Cybernogi. Cybernogy, I'm not exactly positive again
on the annunciation of the Cybernogi is according to use

(28:41):
net members, which using net remember you using that? Yeah? Well,
according to us net, Cybernogi created and Cybernogi is a
German programmer, and people believe that he created he or
she I should say, created the game as in April

(29:02):
Fools joke. Evidently Cybernoggi has been known to put out
April Fool's jokes. Two people on the net, So cyber
he created the game or he created the legend of
the game, created the whole thing, as in made the
whole thing for April fools. But here's the problem is
that Okay, well people say, okay, well I think he

(29:23):
did it, and then here's the stories. But I haven't
seen any research and I couldn't find anything that would
link the two together. So it's kind of, oh, that
jerk does that stuff all the time. I'll about that
jerk did this. Does usually take credit for his April fool, Frank,
I don't believe. So that's the thing is that people
will eventually come back and say, we're out in you

(29:45):
is the one who did that whatever? Maybe yeah, yeah, size,
which it's not exactly an arrestable offense. Okay, Okay, So
so next week this will be a two part episode.
We are going to fly to Germany personally and subjects
I Gnocgie to some intensive interrogation. Yeah, we can do that,
or we can just keep going. Okay, we should probably

(30:07):
just keep going. Okay, I want to go to Chairmany.
I know you do. I really want to let you
keep somebody no no battery. Okay. We're gonna move forward
into the places that it could have been released, where
the game cabinet actually go. I've come across a couple

(30:29):
of bits of information that say there was an arcade
here in Portland called Backwater Alleys, which evidently is closed
down long ago. They're reported as one of the places
that supposedly got the game cabinet. Another one is Blue Diamond,
which is still around. But Blue Diamond is actually a bar. Now,

(30:51):
I mean it's possible, but I mean that place is
a bar restaurant. It's got a full kitchen and a
full bar and everything. And I suppose at some point
some he might have Supposedly the building was renovated in
the nineties and that's when it became a bar. So
we got Blue Diamond. I've seen reports that say that
it was in Gresham, Oregon, which is just outside of

(31:13):
the city of Portland, because again the story says it
was released in suburbs, so Gresham could be a plausible candidate.
But then again, I've also heard that it was released
in Kansas, which is not a suburb of Portland. Shockingly, Yeah,
they're so close together. Yeah, so I don't know where
it's at. Well, I thought about Blue Diamond. No, I'm

(31:34):
saying that I don't know where it was released at. Yeah,
you don't know exactly where this thing was at. Yeah,
they didn't say suburbs, and I don't know why. I
don't know why they picked the suburbs. Don't either. It's
it's kind of an odd place to say. Well, think
about it is, if you put it in various suburban
places and your your men in black are going to
have to drive farther distances to go out there and
monitor the teenagers playing it, I would think you'd want

(31:56):
to keep them close. In suburbs makes sense because that's
where the kids are at. That's where the kids are,
that's where the board kids are. But it's also you know,
if you do want to keep it under wraps, right,
it's not like the most central hub. You know, there's
not as many kids around. So if you decide to

(32:18):
pull it after a couple of weeks, you can just
pull it and it won't be like this massive outcry.
Not that Portland was giant in the eighties, but it'd
be less of an outcry late, right, And I want
to jump to a point that we've talked about before,
which I know we were talking about the pictures of
the cabinet and the title screen and all that, because
that's how we got the name of the company. One

(32:39):
of the things that I couldn't ever come to grips
with when it came to this title screenshot is how
did somebody get it? Yeah? Absolutely, Here's the thing. Remember
these cabinets. It's a glass face with a video monitor
underneath the case. And it's a CRT monitor. It's old
school monitor. So even using thirty five millimeter film, the

(33:04):
screen roles, you're not going to get a good clear image.
And these images that are put up of this title
screen they look like screenshot. They look like screenshots. How
did somebody get the screenshot if the machine was only
out there for a very short time? Although I guess
to like counter that, you know, like just in terms
of things that are coming up in my brain right now,

(33:25):
why choose Portland for your hoax place? Like? What a
weird place to pick as a hoax place? Really? You know,
like okay, some like tiny town in the middle of Kansas, Okay, sure, right,
or some like really big metropolitan hub, but like Portland,
Oregon in the eighties is like the weirdest, like literally
the weirdest spot that you could pick. I feel like

(33:46):
it still is even even I guess more now you
know there's more people here, but it was it was
a bit more of a backwater back in but it
wasn't like totally backwar. So it's just to me, it's
such a weird, it's unusual place. It's not where you
would normally want to go to market something. So that,
but it's also not the kind of place that you
would pick as like a hoax, right, if you were

(34:08):
going to like pick a place to start a hoax.
That that is an interesting point, is that, like you
would think that people generally, when they're making up stories
about America, the story is said in New York, Chicago,
San Francisco, or Los Angeles or some tiny place nobody,
or maybe Miami or yeah, or some some some strange,

(34:30):
some squirky little town called Silent Hill or something like
that from a creepy little place. Yeah. OK, so that
that's that's kind of interesting. Another question mark on this
whole Yeah, this whole thing so far. And I don't
know if YouTube have gotten this impression, but there's just
question marks all over the place written read ink for Yeah.
I totally agree with that, and I think, you know,

(34:51):
it's like as for as much evidence that I feel
like disproves it, there's also like it's almost the exact
same amount of almost enough to yeah, see it actually happens. Yeah,
and we're like halfway through, right, got halfway through? Yeah yeah, yeah,
we've got and we've got ways to go, and we're
gonna move on to Joe's favorite subject, which is the

(35:11):
supposed Men in Black. So here's the thing is that
it was. It is not unheard of for the government
to get involved with games, to use them as a
way to find people with abilities to try to recruit them.
Battle Zone that we talked about there, which anybody who

(35:34):
doesn't know what battle zone is, it's this old cabinet
game where you put your your face into a periscope
and you drove a tank around and you were blasting
enemy tanks and driving around. Yeas would also swoop in
and you have to blast them to So do you
know what that thing was before it became a video game.
I heard it was a Bradley Bradley troop carriers. It

(35:56):
was a training module for Bradley carrier tanks. So this
is what soldiers did for before they went out in
the field, as they learned to drive the tank in
a VR situation. Well, I mean airplane pilots do it
to this day, they use flight simulators that are open
to the public. You know, people do use them in
like a less sophisticated sense. But this has been a

(36:17):
thing forever. Is that that's how you train Rainbow six
When that first came out, Evidently the scores and stuff
like that, we're being fed back to the army or
the military heard. And again I can't validatee game. No
it was it wasn't gosh, what was that on It

(36:38):
was a PlayStation game or something like that. It came
out a good number of years ago. But supposedly you
could register scores. So I don't know, and I just
hear these things. Yeah, it's a weird thing. And there's
there's all kinds of creepy stories. If oh, I played
the sniper game. When I got to the end, the
phone number came up, and I called the phone number

(36:59):
and it was a secret Nervously they offered me a job. Yeah, yeah,
I tend, I tend to, you know, I mean, I'm
I'm totally on board with the sinister government theory. At
the same time, I'm totally on board with the incompetent
government theory. And I don't I don't think they had
the brains to come up with ideas like this. Well,
but here's the thing. Okay, let's just say that somebody

(37:21):
was collecting data out of the machine. What could you
get out of a nine video game processor besides the
high score? Well okay, and not that sophistic record video.
They can't record audio. So I mean, is it just
they're doing duration and score? I mean, yeah, you could

(37:44):
get that. The data, the data you could get out
of it would be like, you know, maybe how often
it was played and how much it was played. You
can get that kind of stuff. But of course, if
you're sending men in black around and just like skulking
skulk in the shadows and watch the kids play, and
they're noticing the kids lining up around the block to
play this game, they don't really need to download the
data about how frequently the game was played. Yeah. Actually,

(38:07):
you know, to me, the idea of them school I
just like hanging around makes way more sense than the
idea of them like, you know, coming to collect data.
I guess maybe if they saw someone that was like
playing it a lot, they would want to know what
your high score was or something like that. But I think,
you know, this seems much more like a situation where
they would want to know how it was affecting people

(38:29):
more than they would want to know about high scores
or how long it's played or anything like that. The
machine itself wouldn't give you that information. Now it's plawed. Okay,
let's go with the sins for government again, and let's say, okay,
it's plausible that they had some kind of video recorder,
and it would have been a video recorder would have

(38:49):
been on tape in the box, filming everybody who was playing.
And so we're going and changing the tape, literally changing
the tape I could have been to They might have
been like the handles that we used for playing the game.
You know, maybe they had galvanic response mechanisms built into them,
so they could actually probably download what is that they

(39:12):
could like actually from the from what's going on in
the electric currents in your skin, they can tell what's
going on with your nervous system, and so in the
eighties they can Yeah, I'm not so sure about that,
but again, these are men in black, so they probably
had some sophisticated tools that the rest of us didn't
have back in there. I guess, you know, I think
what it really was. Should I save my my my

(39:33):
summation of what I think it really was until the end? Okay,
I think I think it makes sense to me that
if you're going to send some agents to like stand
and watch behavior, if they say, oh, yeah, we're text
for this thing, and we're going to have to go
in like once a day just to make sure it's working,
that's a great cover story for why they're hanging out
all day instead of like we're just here watching the kids, right,

(39:58):
I mean, so, yeah, we have to open it up
once a day, you know, for no good reason except
to like have a good cover story. I don't know
her government, there's all this, yes, I mean all right,
so the machine disappeared. Yeah, it was taken away. It
was taken away and probably executed and probably had a
blindfold cigarette. Yeah you suck. Well, now everybody is saying, well,

(40:27):
where's the ram of it, which, if you don't know rams,
where you only memory. It's a game you can download
and play on your computer, and they do remakes of
all these old games. Dude, this is my favorite thing
in the entire world. MS. Yeah, I spend a lot
of time playing my all time favorite game, which is
a sn S game that you can only play on

(40:49):
your computer. Now, I mean unless you have an S
n S. So which one Earthbound one? Oh it's so
good you should. We'll have this discussion, like I need
to get the wrong for Asteroids. Yeah all right, Well anyway,
so a ROM is a recreation of the game, and
there have been just like everything else, a bunch but

(41:10):
oh I've got a wrong of the game. Okay, let's
see it. I lost it, it got deleted or the
most famous one out there is everybody would get this
wrong and it would load the title screen that was
on the internet. It would make this weird noise and
then it would crash. I okay, So I have a

(41:32):
big problem with this again saying you know, I love rams.
There aren't a lot of ROMs for things that have
been only arcade games because it's really hard to translate.
So you know, I guess this is made up statistic,
but the majority of the ROMs out there are games

(41:53):
that have been on console translated by the company that
of any kind, um, so, games that exist solely in
arcade box format. I know this because that I have
an arcade game that I'm obsessed with and like literally
can play for hours. And I wanted to find the
RAM of it one time, and I do this a
bunch of research, and it you know, comes out that

(42:15):
unless it's been released on a console, your likelihood of
finding a ROM of it is like none. Yeah, it's
just not going to happen because it's so hard to translates.
I'm sure somebody's just like totally reprogrammed. I'm sure, I'm
sure somebody, because I mean it's so freaking classic. I mean,
how could it not well, and it's easy. Yeah, it's

(42:36):
pretty simple of the game. Yeah. So but with something
like this, you know, my belief of a ROM existing
in any capacity is very low. Ladies and gentlemen. I
would to apologize quite obviously we're geeking out on video. Yeah, yeah,
we are. Sorry. I've been holding back not to just
run down that road. Here's the thing. If this is

(43:00):
a wrong, it should work, and there is, and we're
going to go back to the big bad government conspiracy theory.
People have said, well, it's a direct translation, but of
course the hardware in a PC doesn't work like the
hardware in the actual machine does, so it can't do
the mind control voodoo. That's the thing I've ever heard

(43:25):
that anyone. It doesn't it. It does not hold water
for me. But it is funny that I see this now.
I also will say that there are a bunch of
people who say they have ROMs that aren't actual wrongs,
because what they've done is they've taken the descriptions of
the game and then they've recreated it the way they

(43:48):
think it would have been. Yeah, which is really interesting
to me. Actually, it is interesting, and I've watched them,
and I gotta be honest, it looks like a lame
game based on the way people built it. And also
again I can see why you get a seizure because
nothing but flashing lights and more. Yeah, And you know,
and that's that's the other thing too, is that perhaps

(44:09):
this game actually existed, perhaps they did put some beta
versions in in our cades, and perhaps it was just
so lame that told what he played it and that's
why it disappeared forever. Yeah, And that the whole urban
myth of like people lying it's just kind of been
the built up version of it. Yeah, could have been
just a really lame game, or it seems lame to us,

(44:30):
because like you know, our games now are super right,
but like you know, and again we were talking about
like this whole introduction of vector graphics and maybe you know,
it was super flashing lights and everything, and you just
kind of like got carried away with it. And the
reason it was addictive was because you were so busy
like paying attention to flashing lights that like you sucked

(44:52):
at the game. Right, It's just like these graphics are
so cool, what's going on here? And then you die
a million times. It's so far. We have a lot
of information that basically is uncorroborated, and at this point
in my research, I would have dumped this story, except
there's one character that we haven't talked about, not Santa.

(45:16):
It's a guy by the name of Steven Roach, Stephen Roach.
He is based out of the Czech Republic. In March
two thousand and six, he went on a bunch of
forums and he made a post and it's the same
post he he literally cut and paste. He wrote this
thing up and cut pasted it every time. He claims

(45:40):
that he was involved in the creation of Polybius and
has a bunch of details about the game and its
history in terms of how it was made, why it
was made, where all of this stuff which we're gonna
go into, I will say right know that there is

(46:02):
a lot of doubt cast upon the validity of this
guy's story. People have picked it apart. He's done some
interviews and people have turned around and said, well, you know,
it's pretty funny. His answers almost exactly match what was
on the Wikipedia page about this. Okay, Well, you know
the problem is Wikipedia is constantly changing, and he could

(46:25):
have updated or somebody could have read his details put
them on the wiki page, and then everybody asking, well,
that's weird, they Matt almost word for words. He could
he could have actually he could actually have edited the
wiki page of himself and stuff. Yeah, he could have
been an updator on it. I guess my My big
question is like, why wait till two thousand six. Well,

(46:48):
we'll get into that, okay, So let's let's just start
at the beginning. So Joe helped me again. What is
the name? How do you pronounce this? Actually, that's spelling
it differently now since slosa and actually this is the
spelling is different. Well that's fine, that's fine because this
is how he pronounces it versus the internet. Um, but

(47:11):
he said This was a company that he and a
couple other amateur programmers had put together in eight and
they were approached in nineteen eighty by a South American
company that he wouldn't give the name of for legal reasons.
I guess they paid him. He probably signed an NDA

(47:33):
and non disclosure agreement, so he's you know, he's keeping
his mouth shut on that, which is understandable. Uh. They
came and said that they wanted an arcade game made
that was going to use puzzle elements, but as we
talked about before, they wanted to use vector graph Okay, well,
this all makes sense so far. So they make this, uh,

(47:56):
this puzzle game and it's it's got all this different
and stuff going on, things that haven't been seen in
video games, and they're all agog, they're really excited. And
then the game gets released by this company. One of
the places, he says that there were seven cabinets made. Okay,

(48:16):
one of the places here in Portland, Oregon that he
says it was released was the Lloyd District. Okay, wait,
I'm just gonna go back to my previous statement about
like Portland being a weird place to pick right, and
then like furthermore the Lloyd District, especially in the eighties
was kind of a dump. Trying to find like a
good word for that. And I feel like I can

(48:38):
say that. I mean, I was born in seven in
the Lloyd District, so I you know, in the nineties
it was a dump. In the eighties it was a dump,
you know. And and it's not even like a very
well publicized area of Portland. So for somebody to be
creating a hoax by saying, oh, it's Portland, and then
to like further it by saying, oh, and it was

(49:00):
in the Lloyd district, Like that's such an obscure place
to say something like that. I just feel like, you know,
I think, for whatever reason, I feel like it leads
credence to the story. Interestingly, to the Blue Diamond, which
is now a bar, is kind of on a southern
periphery of the Lloyd District. Okay, So again again weird

(49:25):
things stitched together in the story. So I don't know.
So he goes on to say that about a week
or not even a week after the game was put out, evidently,
you know, the kids were lining up, they were all
enjoying it. And then a thirteen year old boy has
an epileptic seizure while playing the game. So all the

(49:49):
executives are freaking out because they think that, oh god,
we've we've made the worst thing in the world. We're
going to give people seizures before they pull it. Of course,
now word gets out, according to Roach, that word gets out,
and now it's now this is a fun game to play.
It's teenage boys daring their buddies to go play it,

(50:12):
or their buddies going I'm tough, I'll played it will
be which does not help the image of the sure
so this this is all bad And he said he didn't.
He say that they had play tested it for like
a really long time as adults. All the adult developers
really enjoyed it but didn't have any of this reaction.
But they may not have had you know, they may

(50:35):
not have been epileptic. Well they probably weren't, but you know,
I think that that's what the question, right, is that like,
if an epileptic person plays something that's got flashing lights,
they are probably going to have a seizure. And it's
probably not the fault of the game, not that, but
years ago probably well these things were not as well.

(50:55):
Monitors is the wrong word, but well understood. The tech
oology wasn't good enough. I know personally, I've been in
work environments that were kind of high security would be
a way to say it. And so that you know,
your monitor was watched and screen captures were remotely taken
of your monitor. And we had employees who said, listen,

(51:19):
I have epilepsy. You can't take screen crabs of my
screen because when the screen capture would cause the monitor
to do a little flash, and that would be enough
to set this person off. And so the company couldn't
do it. So it was you know, I mean, I
can see if you're not used to it. This rule
had been made until this one guy came along and said, uh, hi,

(51:42):
can't do that to me, And so everybody's testing it.
It's fine, and then oh, we didn't think about that.
But it's still is a little strange because Okay, what
happens is the game is very popular. One kid has
an epileptic seizure, which may or may not even be
the fault of the game, and they're all like in
panic mode, and they pull all the machines just like really,

(52:03):
I guess I just I think it makes sense to me. Honestly,
you know, the I mean even the scaremongering that happens
with like current video games where people say like, oh,
if you play this game that has guns in it,
you're going to become a murderer, you know, And that
I think is kind of kind of the same situation
where you have this game that's out for a week
and it's technology that people don't really understand, and some kid,

(52:26):
whether he has epilepsy or not, you know, has a
seizure or has an adverse reaction to it. The technology
is so new, people are just gonna say that thing
did it, that thing's fault. There is always that possibility,
although at the same time, I know when I was
a kid, there were always kids that we knew were
just spazzes. So so it's like out but like everything else,

(52:50):
it's peppered with doubt. Well of one of the things
I'm interested in finding out, and I didn't occur to
me to that to actually check this out, is that
have there ever been any video game manufacturers based in
South America? Oh, I'm sure I don't know that. They
weren't the manufacturer as far as I can tell, it

(53:10):
sounded like they were. What was it. How did Roach
put it? Let me grab this. Yeah, well, it sounds
like was was basically him and some friends who were programmers.
So it sounds like they developed some software. But it
doesn't sound it does not sound like they had the
capability to actually produce hardware. No, but again, if it's

(53:31):
a South American company, it could have been some group
that just said an investment group of some kinds. So
they went to some other country and said I need
you to make me this hardware. They went another country
and said I need you to build this. You know,
it could have been just piecemealed out so that when
it got time to do it. No, two people that

(53:54):
were involved in opposite sides knew the other, and that's
that's how cells work. Absolutely, so it's quite possible. So
Roach goes on to talk about though, he says, Okay, well,
this whole thing about men in black, I can tell
you who that was. That was all the exacts at
all the investors who were panicking and came flocking to

(54:16):
the area to deal with this this event, you know,
this this seizure that this boy had and to try
to mitigate the impact of it. So now they're all
hanging around the arcade and they're all nervously staring at
the machine and talking. Of course, everybody's like, what's that?
A bunch of dudes do it, So it could be

(54:36):
as simple as a misinterpretation. They're staring going, oh god,
don't play it, don't play it. Don't play it. Kids,
Like why is that guy staring at me while I'm
playing the game? I mean, if a kid had a
Caesar in an arcade, there's nothing that anybody could do
to keep that out of the new pature. And and
let's face it, this is kind of a slow, slow

(54:58):
move in towns at that time. Well, but they also
you know, they were saying that like there was this
massive fearmongering that happened, right, there was this massive scared
but I I want to I want to pull back
on that because it may have been fearmongering amongst the
company and the investors panicking rather than the public. That's possible. Well,

(55:25):
and and here's the other problem is that we can't
find any record of this boy. But a settlement out
of court was made evidently family, So there's gonna be
no lawsuit on record because they just did it under
the table, listening and I'm sure that they signed, do
not you probably so they've never been able to talk

(55:50):
about it. Says that they were trying to, you know, basically,
after that, he and his buddies they disbanded the company
they made because they just wanted to distance themselves from
this whole thing fell apart. It was terrible and like, no,
we don't want to keep making stuff and be haunted
by this ghost forever. But you know, the thing that

(56:11):
I found less credible about this is he published his
little his little thing in two thousand and six. So
the cultural difference between American two thousand and six in
N is number one. In ninteen eighty one, we weren't
such a litigious society. And you know, in in nineteen
eight one, and I was alive back in those days.
I know that if you know, for example, I was

(56:33):
playing a video game and I had an epileptic seizure,
my parents probably wouldn't think about suing the company that
made it. They would just assume I had an epileptic fit. There.
You probably wouldn't find a lawyer to take the case,
because I mean, the lawyer just say, the jury is
gonna laugh at your kid has epilepsy, well know, and
so I mean, I mean, and so to the lens

(56:53):
of two thousand six Litigious America, this sort of panicking
on the part of the company of the company makes sense,
but in n it doesn't make sense, I guess. So
the counter to that is that, like, so, for instance,
my brother, who does not have epilepsy, has had two
seizures in his life, and you know, both of them

(57:14):
were by outside sources, and that happens to people. So
I think that, you know, we've been saying it's an
apple to fit, it's an maybe he just had a seizure.
Maybe he you know, because some people just that just
happens every once in a while. You don't have epilepsy,
but if this game has if something has given something,
you know. So I think that even in the eighties,

(57:36):
if your kid isn't sick and then suddenly they have
something horrible happen to them, maybe they're not gonna, like,
you know, go through like we're gonna see you for
a million dollars. But probably the company is going to
be like, listen, let's just deal with this right now.
But I don't know, you know, it's hard to tell.
Again again, the kid is also the kid is in

(57:57):
an arcade which has got dozens of other arcade machines
in it, which has obviously been playing one of those.
And it could have been that, it could have been
that he just had recently consumed, like just minutes before
thirty six pop Sickles or something like that. I mean,
it could have been all kinds of things that cost us. See, yeah, sure,
and that's definitely possible. But I think you know, if

(58:18):
it's the startup like whatever, you know, nobody really knows
what they're doing. They're experimenting with new visuals that people
haven't really seen before. I think that the tendency for
a company to panic is greater when they're kind of
experimenting in this sort of situation. But you know, again,
this is we're having exactly the debate that everybody's happen online.
Well again, and I think I think again, actually, when

(58:40):
it's not a startup one they're a really big company,
then then they're typically seen as a deep pocket by attorneys.
But when they're just a startup with not a lot
of capital or anything like that, you know, they're not
they're not really a worthy target because they don't have
any money to take from. Well, let's let's move farther
into to the information that we get from Steven Roche.

(59:04):
So according to a Roach and his explanation is difficult,
and I'm actually going to try and read this verbatim
to describe this to everyone. But this is how he
says the game was played. And again, personally, this game
sounds lame. But the game is centered around a moon

(59:25):
base large which he says is largely played darized from
Star Wars, which displayed a number that doesn't what's what's
that mean exactly? I'm guessing there was a number in
the middle of the moon base. Okay, let's get farther in.
I think this will help clarify a little bit more so.
There's six sets of different aliens. The firch, which varied
through six levels, appears as random waves sent out from

(59:48):
the moon base and need to be destroyed. The others
were numbered between one and ten, which had to be
repelled back to the base to lower the total. The
figure you had to match exactly to clear the level,
otherwise you lose two lives or just one if you
have one remaining. So, if I understand the way he's
saying this, correctly. The moon base, let's say, comes up

(01:00:11):
with number fifty five and a shift comes at you
and it says five, and you bounce it back into
the base. It sounded to me like you were trying
to get the moon base to drop back down to
zero by pushing numbers back into it, like a like
a mix between a shooter game and a math game. Yes, yeah, ok, yeah,

(01:00:33):
so that's how he says. And he goes on to
to give out some more stuff, which makes the description
even more convoluted and difficult to follow it. I don't
I just don't want to read it because it doesn't
logically make sense to me. But what he does say
is that the longer a specific level goes on, faster

(01:00:54):
the game gets, which we've all seen in every video game.
That what as you go longer the screen, the lights
begin to flash, and if you beat the game, the
screen rapidly flashes. Puts up the word polebius and eventually

(01:01:16):
says polybius. And I'm guessing it probably isn't that prototypical,
you know, that deep throated weird voice that they always
had an old video games, which if this kid beat
the game and it's rapid flashing could be what caused
the seizure. Well yeah, I mean you know that makes
sense to me that they would have rapid flashing. Right,
you blew up the moon. It's the representation of the

(01:01:39):
explosion of said moon. Too sophisticated, So you know, it
says Plebi. You know, based on that description, I can
see how somebody could have a caesar from it. But
I can also you know, it does kind of sound
like a lame game, but I can also. You know,
when I was a kid playing like math Rabbit or whatever,

(01:01:59):
like get addicted to those things because you know, you
just in your mind, you just are competitive and you think,
well if I just played again, maybe this time I'll
do better, you know, And it's just it just feeds
on it. I played the crap out of Asteroids. I
played the Holy Heck out of the Star Wars game.
It's a total vector base to this game. If I

(01:02:20):
to this day, if I see that game, I'll play it.
Oh yeah, I can't help myself. I gotta drop fifty
cents in and play. Yeah, listen, there are games. This
is how. There's that bar downtown called ground Control, which
is like an adult arcade, and like there are games
there that like nobody ever wants to play, but I'm
sitting there playing them like drunk, Like I've got a

(01:02:41):
couple of beers in me. I'm just like playing it,
just shoving quarters in and there's no reason for it
except for that I can't pass them up because you Yeah,
by the way, do they have asteroids there? Yeah? Probably
there's got a long time. I mean, you know, so

(01:03:02):
it's it's one of those games that you think you think,
like empirically, you're like, wow, it sounds boring, but then
you like get into it and you're like, oh man,
so fun and so hard. But if you do this,
it's really good. Yeah, I mean it's completely plausible. Yeah.
And you know the thing that I always say about like, again,
i'm a little bit nerding out here, but like video
games of the past versus video games of now, right,

(01:03:24):
video games of the past you had to you had
to hate before you could love them. And I think
that's a great thing to say about a game like this,
where like you would hate this game, you would hate it,
but you wouldn't want it to beat you, so you'd
go back and play and play and play it. And
I can see how people would just get or you'd
watch that one guy who was really good somehow figured
it out and then you couldn't help but watch him play. Yeah. Absolutely,

(01:03:48):
so you know I can see just based on that description. Actually,
that description is far more interesting to me than any
of the other things we've Yeah, I mean really like, okay, cool,
it's like shooting some asteroids or whatever. Fine, but like
you have to keep track of the number, and like
you have to hit the right numbers back and then
also dodge the ships then also shoot the like waves,

(01:04:10):
and also the graphics are really cool and new. Well,
that doesn't make a lot of sense to me again
because like you're supposed to knock back the ships. That
the ships come out with numbers, and not all of them.
Some come out without and you gotta kill some come
out with a number, and you got to knock them
back in there so and you know, and and the
never has to match exactly, which means that if I say,

(01:04:33):
say you're at like the number the random number generated
was thirty three, and you've knocked back and knocked back
like five ships to total dirty, so that means the
number is at three right now, and the ship comes
out and it's got the number four on it, so
you dodge it. So you dodge it, But then it
gets past you, and that doesn't start shooting at you know,

(01:04:54):
surely it just continues, right, Those I don't think are
probably maybe you can destroy them. I don't know. Maybe ye,
maybe maybe you used to destroy. We don't know. We
know nothing. We could sit here for another hour and
talk about that's a good point. We don't know. And
the worst part is that's the end of the information
we have. Yeah, we've got the Internet legend, We've got

(01:05:17):
some details that people seem to repeat, but I can't validate.
We've got a story by Roach which sounds plausible, and
I can see credence in bits and pieces, but I
can't none of it stitches together. And this is probably
the loosest bit of This is the loosest story we've

(01:05:38):
done yet, because it's all over the map. Yeah, And first, personally,
I find no reason whatsoever to believe Stephen Roach. And
also I think we've gone on long enough. It's time
to solve the mystery. Oh, Joe knows the answer, apparently,
What is the answer, Joe, Well, it's pretty freaking obvious. Okay,
this is a the best department experiment to it a

(01:06:00):
video game, and the idea was to create a video
game that would cause people to completely spas, go insane,
kill themselves. The idea was that once they perfected this
and tested it, then they would air drop like millions
of these in the hostile countries like Iran, North Korea
or whatever and and totally decimate their populations. So they
put so they put out a beta version in Portland,

(01:06:24):
and and the other thing to get is one one
Katie Spas is out and has an epileptic fit, you know,
and so a major disappointment. So they pulled it and
they put him in a huge warehouse somewhere like the
one you see at the end of Ridges of the
Lost Art where they still are. And uh, and that said,
that was the end of the experiment. They decided it
was like, you know, they just couldn't create a video
game that would cause people to spas out and kill themselves.

(01:06:45):
I I personally, my personal opinion is that I think
that it may have been real, but I don't think
it was real in terms of the actual incarnation that
we hear about you all of the stories. I think
that it probably is this is an amalgamation of several

(01:07:07):
stories of several games that have been merged together through
the mishmash of the Internet. There's enough concrete or solid
believable information here that I'm willing to run with it.
I just don't think that Polebius was real. I think
that it was beta versions of tempests or battles under

(01:07:27):
any of these other games that are out there, or
games that we don't even know of because they just
faded from the memory of the social group. Is that
I think that it was. It's just a bunch of
them stitched together. I think that you know, actually, if
you to look for a credible version of the whole thing,
it's like if you can imagine some nerve that hung
out in game arcades back in those days, and this

(01:07:49):
game shows up and it's it's put out in a
few places, not just his but and it turns outack, no,
but what I mean, it's like, so, okay, so this guy,
this guy is like like witnessing that the arrival of
this game from nowhere, and it's really popular with him
and his dorky friends, and it's like they really like
it a lot. But it turns out it's not it's

(01:08:09):
totally a dead letter and every other arcade they put
it in. So a couple of weeks go by, you know,
and maybe randomly some kid has an epileptic seizure while
he's in the arcade. Then the game gets pulled because
it's obviously a failure because besides, aside from this guy
is nerdy friends, nobody else likes it or plays it.
So they pull it and that's the end of that.

(01:08:30):
And then this guy like sort of like, you know,
years later he's like, you know, tax it onto the
end of the Southern legend. Yeah, it's like this guy
years later says, you know, I can't believe this. You know,
this this arcade game shows up and and everybody was
nuts about it, meeting him and his friends, you know,
and then somebody has some much somebody like has an
epileptic fit, and then they pulled the game and and

(01:08:53):
and that was it. The whole thing just went down
the memory hole. But now maybe it was just purely
a game that sucked and nobody wanted to play it,
and so they pulled it out. What do you think
that I honestly, I don't know what I think, you know,
I do I think that there's Yeah, I really am actually,
you know, I think that there's a lot of stuff
that's great in the story, and I think there's a

(01:09:15):
lot of stuff that pure crap in this story. I
you guys know, when you probably listeners, you now know
based on my like little rants, I'm really passionate about
video games. I really like them. And you know the
fact that there are so many things that I almost
like want to be true. I just I just can't

(01:09:35):
decide either way whether it existed or not, you know.
And I do think that since we do have the
you know, pleasure of living in Portland, maybe we can
find a little more about it, but probably not. You know,
I think that if that stuff was to be found,
it would be on the internet already, would be part
of the story, because I think this is the thing
about internet. People speculate and and they cut and paste

(01:09:58):
and make stuff up. If anybody, any of these people
are out there that are actually busily obsessing over this
this topic, they would have done a couple of things.
They would have looked for a South American software company
that was specialized in video games. They would have gone
through the Oregonians archives. They would have looked in German records,
because there's got to be at least one nerd out
there in Germany who's following this intensely, who could actually

(01:10:21):
look in public records to see if a company was
ever incorporated called Zinnish Lawson. No, and nobody's done this. Yeah,
I mean it's hard to say. Yeah, well, ladies and gentlemen,
we're gonna leave this one unsolved. That would be permanently unsolved.
Maybe permanently, but uh, that having been said, if you'd

(01:10:42):
like to go ahead and check out some of the
links for some of the research that we did for
the show, you can go ahead and check that out
on our website. The website is, of course, thinking Sideways
podcast dot com. You can listen to the show right
there on that website. You can also go ahead and
listen to the show on iTunes if you want to

(01:11:03):
go in and download, and probably most of you the
download do it through iTunes. Got a couple of minutes,
go ahead and leave us that comment as well, because
that's what helps other people find us. Uh. If you're
on the go and you realize that you know a
new show has come out and you forgot to download it, well,
of course, you can find us on Stitcher, which is
available on just about every internet capable device, and you

(01:11:27):
can stream it right there. You can always go ahead
and send us an email. So if you've got thoughts
on this particular episode, or stories that we've got on
the site, or stories you'd like to hear any of
the above, or anything else, go ahead and you can
send us an email. Our email address is Thinking Sideways

(01:11:48):
Podcast at gmail dot com. And as a matter of fact, yeah,
we have some listener comments. Well it's it's good. Um.
I mean basically what it is is, there's this little
website called Reddit. It's a little tiny um, but we
actually got a message there from a user anyways, he

(01:12:10):
uh really likes our show. He looped us in with
like a bunch of other really awesome podcasts um and
also suggested podcast topic for us. Yeah, which we're definitely
gonna get to. Um. But I just thought we'd give
him a little shout out, because you know, I like
hearing great things about our show. I don't know about you, guys,

(01:12:31):
I don't care. It's a story to look into it. Yeah.
The mom Talk Project, which is I think going to
be a lot of research. Okay, Yeah, I've not heard
of that. Yeah, it's a conspiracy, so Joe might have
to head So eighteens. Thanks or do that, whatever whichever

(01:12:57):
you are, we appreciate it. Yeah. I guess I just
assumed you were a dude, but you could be a
check totally okay. Al right, well that having been said,
once again, thanks for for slogging through this one with us,
ladies and gentlemen. I know this. We didn't. We didn't
think this was gonna be turned into as big of
an episode as it obviously has. But I hope you
enjoyed it, and we're gonna go ahead and wrap it

(01:13:18):
up and U we'll come back at you next week
with something completely unrelated to today's show and completely interesting Jo,
then we'll talk you later. It was aliens. Yeah, I
don't want to. I don't want to