In 1981, the coinop arcade video game era was in its golden age. And no game was more advanced than Polybius. But then one night, all the Polybius games disappeared suddenly. What happened? The post Let' go back to the early 1980s. Due to miniaturization and early microprocessors, the arcade video game became a reality in the late 70s. Teens and pre-teens flocked to these gaming centers and pestered their parents for a never-ending stream of quarters. BTW, 25 cents in 1980 would be approximately 90 cents today. Imagine paying nearly a dollar every time you played a video game…and if you weren't very good at it, the experience might only last a minute or two. The early 80s were a weird time in terms of parents and social trends. This was the era when In such an environment, arcades were often viewed as a dangerous, seductive vice for kids. I was nearly a teen at the time and remember parents whispering rumors that the "vice squad had raided the arcade again" because an underground drug ring was operating there. In fact, I heard rumors about "underground drug rings" operating out of In actuality, kids were not a profitable market for narcotics, and besides, every quarter they had was being fed into these wildly profitable machines, so there was little need to peddle dope. Nevertheless, there were…issues. Players sometimes got obsessed, and I saw more than one proto-nerd rage for reasons such as: Then there game hogs, who had a little more money than everyone else and could stand in front of a machine for hours. And, of course, kids who simply got a little too into arcade games obsession and whose parents began putting limits on their time. Polybius was an extremely well-crafted video game, first deployed in Portland, Oregon. Its gameplay was a generation ahead of anything else on the floor. It was hard to find a machine because the power requirements were substantial so not many arcades had it. Players described the game as a fast-paced shooter with puzzle elements and intense vector-style graphics, flashing lights, and word messages that strobed on the screen. The case itself was all black, with only the glowing word POLYBIUS on its marquee. Kids who did manage to find a system often abandoned all other games and obsessed on Polybius. This lead to fist fights and more than once the police had to be called at closing time to pry teens away from the controls. More darkly, there were many emergency room admissions by teens who underwent seizures from playing, and even when not at the controls, kids seemed to suffer hallucinations, night terrors, and blackout memory loss. And then, all of a sudden, Polybius disappeared. No one could find the machine anywhere. Rumors spread that they'd been seized by the government. Or perhaps the government had placed them in the first place as a sort of trial run…for what, no one was sure. It was clear, though, that the placement of Polybius games had been