Polybius is a supposed arcade game featured in an Internet urban legend. According to the story, the Tempest-style game was released to the public in 1981, and caused its players to go insane, causing them to suffer from intense stress and horrific nightmares. A short time after its release, it supposedly disappeared without a trace. No evidence for the existence of such a game has ever been discovered.

More can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybius_(game) & here  http://www.joltcountry.com/polybius.html

Here are some screen mock-ups: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqZNvQpAdTs and a lame "Polybius found video": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Emg09EcatE

You can even download what's it's suppose to look like here (no guarantee you will have nightmares or go insane): http://www.sinnesloschen.com/1.php

Anyone else heard of this? I would be interesting to have a mock up of the arcade game just for s/g.

Well snopes.com has this (scroll down to last entry)

Exactly. It's just a hoax. But it's still fun to read.  :D

  Never heard of the Polybius game but it's said video games can trigger epileptic seizures in some people.  Try it out, see what happens...

  Anyone remember the urban legend of the dead date, the Spanish Fly and the stick shift.  Maybe that one goes back to to the 70s, possibly earlier...

It sounds like the plot to some 80s B-movie!  ;D Gotta love those urban legends!  :D

If wiki has a page on it, it must be true.

I asked Ed Rotberg about the game, since it states on Wikipedia that he wrote it. He said he had heard that rumor, but it wasn't true, and he laughed about it.

For those of you who haven't heard of Ed, he wrote the arcade Battlezone.