The Polybius Conspiracy

This week, we dove into the Polybius Conspiracy, the 1981 Portland arcade legend about a mysterious, unmarked cabinet that supposedly turned kids into zombies, with Men in Black collecting “data” at night.

We dug through the creepy-fun origin story, the real-life arcade raids and Atari’s secret field tests, and the game-industry skeptics who’ve been poking holes in it for years.

Then we compared four theories, from a government mind-control experiment to an early-internet creepypasta, and, true to form, we couldn’t agree on a verdict (one of us now suspects the debunker might be a Man in Black himself, by the way).