The first two links are the PRIMARY cited sources of information by almost everyone looking into this legend.

Coinop.org. This appears to be the seed of the hoax; page claims it was initially posted 8/3/1998. Multiple user comments encompass wide spectrum of rational/irrational reactions. Some unhelpful links. No ROM offered.

Videogame Urban Legend- Polybius by Michael Thomasson - Considerably more dramatic workup/article on Good Deal Games' site. Basically retells Coinop's details. No ROM offered.

GamePro's article "Secrets and Lies" briefly mentioned Polybius and reawakened interest in this dormant urban legend. No ROM offered. August 2003.

Snopes.com mentions in brief.

Note: Almost all the message board threads listed here spawned in August of 2003 after the GamePro mention. However, as the USENET archives will show discussion of Polybius has been going on since at least 2000.

GamePro forums have an active Polybius thread- however, need to visit this again as forum was down when I compiled this page. From reading at work, remember that the GamePro forums had a man claiming to be a victim and or developer of Polybius working for YET ANOTHER secret organization...

Good Deal Games- "the truth about Polybius" Difficult thread to read due to design of message board. However, worth the effort...
NEW INFO: Lacy Davis:"Hello my name is Lacy Davis one of my sons told me about this website. I just wanted to say that my oldest son Matt played this game when he was about 17 he did have some nightmares but that wasn't the odd part he over a span of a month or two went completetly against arcades all together and started an activist group. But he quit calling me or writing or anything if any of you have any information on where he is please post it here on this site." (editorial note: "Matt Davis" is credited as playing Travis/Trevor (?) in Urban Legends, The Final Cut).
NEW INFO: bill: "If this game was/is real it is no longer/never was copyrighted. There is no Polybius video game copyright."
NEW INFO: eli says there were 12 original Polybius consoles, disregarding any ROM copies. Where did this number come from? Who knows?

PlanetXbox @ forumplanet.com - "Polybius- Video Game Urban Myth". Mentions made to "Lucky Wander Boy".
NEW INFO: Poster "Aoi" claims Polybius is "in god damned coin op catalogs, though it’s listed as unavailable." No names of companies given. "Aoi" also says to have spoken to D.B. Weiss, the author of Lucky Wander Boy, who "found out about the myth about a month before his book was published."

GameWinners.com forum- "POlybius?". Motherlode thread adding bizarre twists and claims to the legend.
NEW INFO: This thread adds a new twist: member "WarCraftMasta" claims over the course of several posts to be involved with a 'secret group' that is 'investigating Polybius'. Of course, he can't tell us anything about the group... (Yes, I'm perfectly aware this is bogus.)

Gamebunker- "Polybius, the evil game of doom!" Unremarkable thread except:
NEW INFO: Poster "Arluss" kicks off the thread with the mention that viewing the ROM will wipe your mental memory clean! (Now it's not just the original game itself, see...)

Snopes.com- "Polybius", debunking and discussion thread. Mentions the CYBERYOGI connection again.

Scythe of Light Forums - "An Urban Legend of Video Games- Polybius". Thread moves to discussion of adapting the story for use as a plot hook in a roleplaying campaign.

www.solvalou.com- "Looking for Information Regarding the Game 'Polybius'" - no replies.

UKChatforums.com- "Arcade Game Polybius". Brief thread, nothing new. Legend is now moving across the pond!

Bookmarked here for quick searching convenience.

google: rec.games.video.arcade- Polybius is NOT mentioned here, but is included in this list as interesting related topic- some gamers report eerie effects from playing "Intrepid" and "Spy Vs Spy" that are VERY similar to the urban myth of Polybius. (see poster Andrew in this thread.) (from 1999)

google: rec.games.video.classic - Thread from Feb 2000 discussing Polybius.

google: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting Thread from Feb 2000 discussing Polybius.

google: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting Thread from April 2000 discussing Polybius. CYBERYOGI IS present in this thread but gives no response to the followup post.

google: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting- Thread from April 2001. Mentions "CYBERYOGI" connection. See "CYBERYOGI" information below.

google: rec.games.video.arcade -August 2003 thread, info requests.

google: alt.games.mame - August 2003 thread, info requests.

As noted in the Message Board Threads links, there is a novel, published by Plume in February of 2003, called Lucky Wander Boy which, among other things, chronicles the narrator's obsession with an "obscure and surrealistic arcade game that no one seems to have ever beaten, and with Araki Itachi, its enigmatic female creator." (quote from Publishers Weekly's editorial review- found at Amazon.com). It is unclear as to whether there is any relation between the game in the novel and Polybius. My initial reaction is to label this a dead-end lead; from reading the excerpts at the author's site, the tone of Lucky Wander Boy does not fit with the Invader-Zim style paranoia of the Polybius 'story' so far.

A segment from the 1983 movie Nightmares featured a young Emilio Estevez obsessing over beating an arcade game with a voice only he could hear. One site gives the name of the game as "The Bishop of Battle." IMDB user review from dsfilm123: "A teenager is destined to beat a video game called The Biship Of Battle. The main character of this story is JJ Cooney, he is an interesting character, because it seems that he can't get this video game off his mind. The Game has 13 levels and , except for a rumor that "some kid in Jersey got to the 13th level", no one has ever beat it. After an unsuccessful night at the arcade trying to get to the 13th level, JJ goes home but just can't seem to get this game out of his mind. So he sneaks out of his house and breaks into the Arcade at night. He plays the game and reaches the 13th level. Well the 13th level is not like any other level he has ever seen before."

From Wikipedia.org: Polybius (203 BC-120 BC) was a Greek historian of the Mediterranean world, especially the rise of the Roman Republic. He is most valued for his account of the Second and Third Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. Unfortunately out of the forty books into which his history is divided, only the first five (covering the period up to 216 BC) survive in total... Polybius was also responsible for a useful tool in cryptography which allowed letters to be easily signalled using a numerical system. This idea lends itself to cryptographic manipulation.

In a nutshell, it's been stated by several USENET posters at various points throughout the history of this hoax that Polybius is the creation of this individual, a German programmer and founder of "Logologie, the world's first cyber-religion." Into 'zoner' games, CYBERYOGI did create a realistic 'hoax' purporting to be a ROM and dump of an East German shooter variant of Phoenix.

CYBERYOGI's home page, including all information about the 'Phoenix variant' is accessible here. However, in searching through literally thousands of archived USENET postings I can find NO DIRECT CORRELATION between CYBERYOGI and Polybius- he does not appear to have addressed it in any newsgroup that Google has access to at any point in Google's archive. In fact, one of the earliest Polybius threads, although it does include a post from CYBERYOGI, actually has a followup from ANOTHER PERSON asking about the game.

So my position on this question is a firm 'maybe'. CYBERYOGI is aware of the "Nightmares" movie and in fact posted about it at one point asking for more information on the sequence's abstract ending. As a programmer with a strong interest in 'trance-inducing' games Polybius WOULD seem to be the kind of thing that would be initiated by this individual. Additionally, the use of the odd German "Sinnesloschen" would also seem to point in his direction. But I can not UNEQUIVOCALLY confirm or deny this connection.

Does NOT at this moment exist, although I wouldn't put it past pranksters to eventually (or have already) CREATE one to capitalize on the hoax. Contrary to some online reports, official documentation and supported games lists for MAME do NOT include Polybius as a supported ROM. I would welcome anyone who could provide me with the supposed 'nonfunctional' ROM at this address.

It translates from German in a crude, non-syntactical way, something along the lines of 'sense-deleting' or (with a stretch) 'amnesia'. Googling shows no record of a game company called Sinnesloschen and I'm not entirely sure if Germany was even PRODUCING video games in the 80's. Again, more info is needed here.

sinnes: illusion, sensorial, sensory. loeschen: delete, destroy, erase, kill, blank out, wipe, zap.

Have information about Polybius? Mail me! cspray. Note: I do NOT have the ROM, I am merely a curious researcher.