 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. It's 1981 and in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, a phenomenon has begun. Dozens of gamers are in line waiting to play the newest arcade sensation, Polybius, a game so exciting that people have come to physical blows just to be next in line to play. Perhaps addictive is a better word, as some players begin to suffer from a series of strange side effects such as seizures, amnesia, insomnia, night terrors, and hallucinations. The machines are rumored to be a government experiment to test the game's psychoactive properties and official-looking men in black have even been seen tending to the machines, extracting data from the consoles. Then, suddenly, after only a month, Polybius disappears without a trace, with no explanation as to why. The story is so strange that it has been deemed an urban legend, but could there be some truth behind the Polybius happening? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here, you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, it's rumored that an arcade game from 1980 might lead to the real death of its players. We'll look at the death curse of Berserk. But first, another arcade game in the early 80s was surrounded by controversy because the game never existed, despite so many saying that it did. Or did it exist? We'll look at the urban legend of Polybius. If you're new here, welcome to the show. While you're listening, be sure to check out WeirdDarkness.com for merchandise, my newsletter, to connect with me on social media, and more. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. In 1981, an arcade in the Portland, Oregon area was the scene of countless gamers coming down with migraines, heart attacks, addiction, seizures, strokes, and even amnesia, all due to one game cabinet, Polybius. The game itself was said to have been created by an unknown government agency to test mind-control technology on unsuspecting civilians. And it worked, almost too well. Or so the legend goes. It's almost quaint to discuss Polybius now. In the age of hyper-targeted Facebook propaganda, military recruiting via Twitch, and the looming specter of deep fakes, the idea that the public would be so terrified of an arcade game is kind of adorable. It goes without saying that urban legends like this were the product of a more naive time. A time before such tales would become weaponized and mutate into the far more dangerous genre of conspiracy theories. The name Polybius itself was likely selected specifically as bait for the inquisitive and easily spooked. The original Polybius was an ancient Greek philosopher born around 208 BC in Megalopolis, Arcadia. He is known for his affinity for cryptography and puzzles. He created the Polybius Square naturally, as well as his belief that historians should strictly report what they can verify through hard evidence and by interviewing witnesses. His name itself means many lives in Greek. Get it? Many lives? Arcadia? Cryptic puzzles? His famous skepticism? It's almost too good a name for a spooky video game. The urban legend of Polybius gained popularity on February 6, 2000 when a listing for the game popped up on coinop.org, a digital museum and database for arcade gaming. The page for Polybius listed the game as having been copyrighted in 1981, though no such copyright exists and only briefly mentions bizarre rumors about the title before classifying its history as unknown. Though impossible to confirm without a confession from the man himself, the person believed to have created the post is Kurt Kohler, the owner of the site. Kohler would also tip off writer Dan Electro of GamePro, which at the time claimed to be the world's largest independent multi-platform gaming magazine to the existence of the story. Eventually, in a 2003 listicle called Secrets and Lies, GamePro came to an inconclusive verdict regarding the veracity of the tip. The story went on to hit slash dot, the closest thing to going viral in the early 2000s, on August 21, 2003. But as we in the age of fake news know, the point of getting the story out there was not to have it debunked, it was to lodge it in the popular imagination of American gamers. At this, Kohler was wildly successful. Polybius has gone on to be the subject of television shows, music videos, documentaries, extensive investigations, even an episode of The Simpsons, and has even become a real purchasable game more than once. Coinop.org has had a similarly long life, it still exists on the internet today, with Polybius remaining its most popular entry. On the page for Polybius are infamous comments left by a user claiming to be a man named Stephen Roach. Roach details his involvement in the game's supposed development. Merrick Vouchasek was the programmer who came up with the name Polybius. He had studied Greek mythology at Masarek University and came up with the name because it sounded quite bold and mysterious, which is what we wanted quite simply. The inspired graphics combined with the puzzle elements and scintillating gameplay was something to behold. We play-tested it for hours and hours and it certainly was an addictive game that was well loved professionally and recreationally by all that played it. We then received a phone call stating that there were concerns within the company that the basic graphics which featured prominently in so many other games at the time were fine for the average gamer to spend hours at a time without any noticeable physical or mental detriments, but the intense and engrossing gameplay of this new step was very much an unknown quantity, so the game was put back several months due to divided opinion within their board of directors, much to our consternation for breaking our backs to finish it on time. We disbanded shortly afterwards because we didn't want to restrict ourselves to the stringent deadlines of other companies and favored distancing ourselves from the game in case of any lingering recriminations which could have done a great deal of damage to our personal and professional reputations which was our livelihood and with some of us having very young families, this was extremely important to us. As far as I'm aware, no ROMs or otherwise exist unless they remain in the bowels of the company that distributed it. We only received a basic payment in view of the fact that the game was withdrawn without nationwide or international distribution, so we grew to loathe it and was often a cursed word whenever we used to meet up and still is today, which is a shame. In his documentary investigating the game called Polybius, the video game that doesn't exist, Stuart Brown of Ahoy claims to have actually tracked down the user who claimed to be Stephen Roche and states unequivocally that his addition to the story is entirely fabricated. In addition to the would-be hoaxers, there are feature films about arcade machines with supernatural powers which would popularize the concept. 1984's The Last Starfighter is about a boy so good at video games that aliens recruit him to wage an actual intergalactic war. And then there's the movie Nightmares, a 1983 horror anthology featuring a vignette called The Battle of Bishop about a game so addicting that it actually sucks a young Emilio Estevez into its secret 13th level. The popularity of Polybius' story is such that it transcends other video game tall tales. It's easily more popular than Minecraft's Herobrine, GTA, San Andreas Sasquatch or that time that people thought Saddam Hussein was trying to conquer the world with a PS2. As mainstream urban legends go, Polybius is probably only slightly less successful than Slenderman or The Hook. But is any of it true? Actually, yes. We look at the truth behind the Polybius conspiracy when Weird Darkness returns. You know about me and my migraines. I found some relief by using the CBD oils at WeirdDarkness.com slash CBD. The migraines aren't nearly as severe and they occur less often. Plus the knee and back pain I have that runs in my family is all but gone now and I credit that to using CBD too. And you can get the benefits of CBD oil in numerous products if you shop at WeirdDarkness.com slash CBD. Bath bombs, gels, capsules, body rubs, muscle creams, face creams, candy bars and more. Even pet products. And all other products come THC free, so you don't have to worry about psychotropic properties like other hemp-related products. If you're a CBD user already or if it's something you just want to try, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash CBD and take a look at all the products available. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash CBD. And remember, use the promo code Weird15 at checkout and save 15% on your entire purchase. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash CBD. To understand the truth behind the legend of the Polybius arcade game, one must fall down an internet rabbit hole that spans both time and cyberspace. Online listings for Polybius all contain the same blurry photo of the game's cabinet and marquee. There's no way to tell if this physical cabinet ever existed or if it's an early Photoshop job thanks to its dubious quality. Listings also host the only known screenshot of the game, and the screenshot displays the game's title screen, the aforementioned copyright date, and credits its development to a company called Cineslotion, a word which roughly translates to something along the lines of sense-deleting or sensory deprivation in broken German. There is no evidence of any such company having ever existed in Germany, the United States, or arcade gaming's capital, Japan. So that's a dead end. The font used for the name Polybius itself is actually quite notable for being so large and colorful during an era when the memory required to produce such an effect was a serious premium. Only games from powerhouses like Nintendo or Williams were known to spend such high-priced resources on something as fleeting as a title screen. In fact, the lettering is reminiscent of the one used for Nintendo's versus Pinball, and one used for Williams' bubbles, though not an exact match for either. It even resembles an East German cabinet called Poly Play from the era, though it's unlikely anything this obscure inspired the American legend. Again, there's not much to go on here. Some sources have claimed that the story of Polybius was making the rounds on Usenet as early as 1994, though there is yet again no record of this in any existing Usenet archives. This may be a case of the Mandela effect, where groups of people misremember the same events, as there was indeed a Pink Floyd-themed puzzle, or a hoax of a puzzle, going around Usenet in the early 90s called Humblius enigma, which became so popular that its name was inexplicably displayed during one of the band's concerts. The puzzle itself is near incomprehensible and has never been solved. Still, other dubious sources have claimed that the gameplay of Polybius was similar to the vector stylings of Rez, Tempest, or Kix. Tempest was extremely popular at the time and known for its mesmerizing graphics, so it's not a stretch to think that it may have stuck in the memories of gamers from that era. Cube Quest, similarly, was a visually stunning title that was only in active use for a very short period of time, owing to its reliance on sensitive, laser-disk technology. A local arcade can only afford so many high-priced repairs. There's also all the people that got sick while playing games like Tempest at the time, just like Polybius. As was the case with Michael Lopez of Beaverton, Oregon, who suffered a sudden migraine while playing Tempest with some friends at the Malibu Grand Pre-Arcade, I began to feel a weird sensation in the back of my head. Then my vision started going out, little flashing lights, recalls Lopez. Suddenly I got sick and stumbled outside, where I threw up all over the parking lot. One of my friends walked with me back home, but we didn't make it all the way there. My head hurt so bad, it got to where I couldn't speak. I couldn't walk anymore. I collapsed on someone's lawn, four blocks from my house, rolling and screaming in pain. It felt like my head was cracking open. Someone called the cops. That was the first migraine headache I ever had. I've had them off and on my whole life since, but it was freaky because I didn't know what was happening at the time. Blame was put on the game's flashing lights and intense visual effects, and the incident was documented by local paper. As was the case of Jeff Daly, a gamer who suffered a heart attack and died after getting his name on the high score list of the game Berserk, which we will talk about later. In that case, Blame was also put on the stress inducing arcade cabinet. Similarly, Peter Bukowski also died of heart failure, possibly due to a myocardial inflammation while playing Berserk. And then there's Brian Morrow, who after 28 hours of playing Asteroids and drinking Coca-Cola got sick and collapsed. Morrow survived, but it's easy to see how the reporting of such events in the Northwestern United States could lead to paranoia about the long-term effects of this new entertainment medium. It's hard to imagine now, but at the time, gaming was such a new phenomenon that it was labeled a fad and classified as part of the toy industry. Parents were suspicious of the machines that were seemingly out of nowhere mesmerizing a generation of American children. Who could blame them? Game developers have spent decades trying to ring the money out of their audience by making their games attention-grabbing, sensorily immersive and increasingly addictive. If anything, parents today should be more skeptical about the immersive, addictive, gambling-adjacent games that are freely available on every conceivable screen in our homes. But today, as was the case in the 80s, people tend to be more suspicious of their own shadowy government than they are of corporations whose motives are transparent. They want to take your money. It doesn't help matters that the FBI indeed was conducting top-secret operations out of America's arcades. The Bureau's records indicate that the agency actually was monitoring and subsequently raiding arcades in the Portland area right around the time that stories of players collapsing in arcades had hit the mainstream media. In those days, arcades which are naturally dark and maze-like had seedy reputations as hot beds of gambling, drug activity and pickpockets looking to prey on teenagers. Though the extent to which these arcades captured the public imagination was out of proportion with the actual issues and the establishments, some of that reputation was earned. Cabinets were being repurposed for gambling. People were selling weed in between rounds of Pac-Man. There are pickpockets wherever teenagers tend to gather, especially in the days before cell phones. One more fanciful operation conducted by the FBI included agents rigging classic cabinets like Tempest, Scramble and Galaxian with cameras and microphones in the hopes of catching criminals in the act. Games like Tempest were selected less for their mind control abilities and more because their cabinets featured glass bezels, ideal for sticking cameras behind. The program was so extensive it briefly caused a shortage of Tempest machines in the Seattle area during the early 80s. Just imagine, teenagers watching men in black wheeling Tempest machines in and out of arcades every few days. It only makes sense that they would start ascribing outlandish motives to the agents. These stories of mind control and government experiments are also, unfortunately, completely based in reality. Many people have heard of it by now but at the time there were only whispers about a CIA program known as MKUltra which was pursuing mind control techniques using technology, multimedia and a whole lot of drugs. The experiments were conducted without the permission of their subjects who have described the experience as extreme psychological torture. With that in mind, a mesmerizing video game doesn't seem so fantastical. These disturbing stories are all verified, but none of them contain the actual game, Polybius. To actually play Polybius, you'll have to settle for one of the many fan games developed in Tribute to the Legend. There is the supposed copy distributed by GoodDealGames.com around April 2004 called Polybius.exe. The game claims to contain its own emulation software and warns players the Polybius video game has been linked to impaired memory and psychological changes. Gameplay may cause epileptic seizures and susceptible individuals. Do you still want to continue? It says that before booting into the familiar title screen. Once one presses any key, the game crashes and another pop-up message explains that it was simply an April Fool's Day joke. Freeware developers Rogue Synapse, known for creating fan-made cabinets of arcade games which never existed like the one from The Last Starfighter, developed and distributed a game named Polybius in 2007. This version attempts to faithfully recreate the gameplay as described in the Urban Legend, including trippy visuals and subliminal messages. In an effort to further the immersive prank, the company's owner, Dr. Estel Vance, registered the URL Synaslotion.com and trademarked the usage of the name Polybius, though noted that it was not an authentic original and was simply an attempt to recreate the Polybius game as it might have existed in 1981. The most famous and easily obtained version of Polybius is from developer Llamasoft, who released its game for the PlayStation 4 and PSVR in 2016. Though the game contains vector-like graphics, it's very obviously a modern creation intended to actually be played as a standalone title. It was in fact so popular that it was used for the music video less than by 9-inch nails in 2017. None of those games are the true Polybius, which, if it ever existed at all, only survives via word-of-mouth and online articles. Polybius was almost certainly invented by Kurt Kohler to promote his website, which obviously succeeded beyond any reasonable explanation. But in the light of free-to-play mobile games with addicting visuals and mechanics, corporations and the government's hyper-targeting ads on Facebook, effectively mind control, and the alphabet soup of federal agencies torturing children, the themes of the legend are more relevant than ever before. In a way, the story of Polybius is entirely true. People were dying while playing addictive video games. Men in black were using arcade machines in secret operations. The government was and probably still is pursuing mind control. The Portland area witnessed all of these things. It just wasn't called Polybius. Up next on Weird Darkness, Polybius wasn't the only arcade game in the early 1980s rumored to cause the death of its players. Another is called Berserk, and it might be even more sinister than Polybius, because this game really did exist. I'd like you to meet the newest member of our Weirdo family. Meet Psyjac, a female arctic wolf. While visiting the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Kingsburg, Colorado, Robin and I fell in love with the place and their mission to save the lives of animals from abuse and neglect. I immediately felt drawn to Psyjac upon seeing her and decided to adopt her in the name of Weird Darkness. Psyjac was born in a safari park that couldn't care for her, but the Wild Animal Sanctuary steps in to save Psyjac and other wild animals from private owners and less than ideal living conditions. Psyjac now has a lifelong home in a large acreage, natural habitat near other wolves. Wild Animal Sanctuary has saved numerous other wild animals from abuse and neglect, lions, grizzlies, tigers, panthers and more. Visit WildAnimalSanctuary.org to learn more, donate to the sanctuary, and maybe adopt an animal of your own, like we have with Psyjac. When it comes to urban legends, foreshadowing is everything. To those who know the background of the berserk death urban legend, it is deeply curious that a certain coincidence happened to be overlooked by the majority of journalists writing on the subject over the decades. One wonders how something so eerily profound could have ever been missed. In Kalamut City, Illinois, if you drive north from I-94 near Highway 83 and Pulaski Road, you'll see two Smiley Face water towers rise in the distance. Dubbed Mr. and Mrs. Smiley Face in 1973, the two well-known landmarks bear striking resemblance to the arch nemesis Evil Otto from the Stern Electronics arcade game Berserk from 1980, the arcade game whose gameplay has long been rumored to yield deadly consequences. From any direction, the smiling happy face towers can be seen rising against the sky. To some, a cheerful welcome, yet to others, mostly arcade historians, they are an intimidating, if not ominously creepy sight. How did no one ever catch that before? The game berserk as the urban legend attests can kill you, just like its partner in crime who was born in the same year, Polybius. For his legend has it, in 1982, a young man walked into Fryer Tuck's game room in Kalamut City, Illinois, put a quarter in a berserk machine, had the game of his life, and then dropped dead. Evil Otto, as the legend goes, possessed the supernatural ability to influence life, threatening physiological conditions, and cause instant death to any player, intruder who failed to heed its alert. Okay, I'll buy it for a moment, but the legend is far from complete and even farther from being accurate. There's more, so much more. On Saturday, April 3rd, 1982, 18-year-old Peter Bukowski, often reported incorrectly as Burkowski of South Holland, Illinois, walked to a severely cold morning blanketed in a thick layer of snow. The iron-gray sky churned with a weather system that prompted forecasters to issue a public announcement warning of an imminent blizzard. The winner of 1981 had been a hard year for Illinois residents who had battled 11 Lake Effect blizzards since January. Peter Bukowski, a seemingly healthy young man and no doubt one who had interests in common with others his age, must have felt a bit bored by the seemingly endless sieges of winter. Like all teens at the height of the video craze, video games were definitely something that was on his mind continuously, just as much as girls. I envisioned him standing at the window of his bedroom that last morning of his life, looking out, his young face lit by the bluish cast of dim daylight on snow. I wonder if he had any idea in his mind that something was a miss inside him. I wonder if he sensed today could be different than any other day he'd lived on earth. Did he feel tired upon waking, sick, or have chest pain? Apparently not, for he hung around his room playing video games that morning, entertained a girl at her home later on in the day, then went to the arcade with a friend after first going home for a warmer jacket. According to census records, the Bukowski home was located on Price Avenue, in a tree-lined, respectable neighborhood of single-level homes, a mere two miles from Friar Tuck's game room once located at 674 River Oaks Drive, Calamity City, Illinois. Judging by events recorded by witnesses, this places him arriving at the arcade roughly around 8pm. From what reports remain, it appears he walked first to his girlfriend's house, then back home, then to another friend's house, then to the arcade, an estimated total distance of 4 miles. Trudging through snow often makes the journey far more strenuous, with many heart attacks reported annually from the act of merely shoveling snow. But Bukowski was young, strong, and not a middle-aged man with a history of angina. Legend has long supported the belief that Bukowski was obese when in fact, he was actually 5'10", and as the coroner observed, weighed 172 pounds, with no prior medical conditions. Bukowski at the age of 18 looked physically sound. Berserk had been on his mind from the moment he first saw the arcade game. As Tom Blankley, community leader and former owner of Friar Tuck's game room remembers, Bukowski was on that game every chance he could get, sometimes with a friend, but a lot of time alone. He loved it. He was a real nice kid, quiet and kind of shy, no problems. For anyone who remembers the old Friar Tuck game room, it was a place of memorable good times. Feamed like a medieval inn, with wrought iron lamps hanging from the ceiling, and candlelight bulbs, stained glass windows and huge wooden doors as an entrance, it appeared as if Robin Hood and his merry men might be found enjoying a game of joust inside. It was not, as some have reported over the years, one of those arcades, where bad kids assembled, smoking dope and causing trouble. It operated as a family-style gaming parlor, offering complimentary coffee and donuts to parents accompanying children, as well as fundraised many great community causes. It was not the kind of place one would expect a teenage boy to die. It was too clean, too innocent, too family-oriented. What happened on that snowy Saturday night in 1982 is sketchy at best. Contaminated by decades of added hearsay, newspaper reporting errors and convenient rewriting of facts that gave rise to an urban legend that persists to this day. But some clear facts do remain. Prior to Pekowski arriving at Friar Tuck's game room, he had complained to his friend, Burton Ben Everett, that he was feeling short of breath and thirsty. Stopping at a convenience store, Pekowski purchased a soda, drank it down quickly, and the two continued on to the arcade. Upon arriving at the arcade, it became obvious to others in attendance that Pekowski was not well. Everett alleges Pekowski was laboring for breath, but he wanted to stay and play Berserk anyway. Thinking he was just too hot from their long walk in the cold and the snow, Pekowski removed his coat and began to play Berserk. In less than 15-20 minutes, he had played two games, both high scores, and put his initials in twice. On the last game though, after putting in his initials, he stepped away from the game, took a few steps, and collapsed. An arcade attendant rushed to his side, and, noticing Pekowski was unresponsive, began CPR while an ambulance was called. Pekowski was rushed to an Indiana hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. It was so awful. Just such a tragedy, Blankley remembers. My staff did what they could until the ambulance arrived. The attendant never left him and never stopped trying to revive him, but for some reason he couldn't be brought back. That's something I have never forgotten. Rumors spread immediately of Pekowski's sudden death by Berserk, making its way to schools and various arcades, prompting some operators, according to Blankley, to pull the game from the floor. Meanwhile, Pekowski's family ordered an autopsy, and what the coroner found was more surprising than what anyone could have ever expected. Unbeknownst to Pekowski's parents, their son's heart was riddled with scar tissue from an undiagnosed congenital condition. Pediatric cardiomyopathy, PC, has long been attributed to sudden heart failure in children and teens if left undiagnosed. Often having no symptoms, the child will often enter their teen years until a physically demanding exercise like football or basketball triggers a cardiac incident, often resulting in sudden death. Historically, thousands of children have dropped on basketball courts and football fields across the world, momentarily baffling those around them as to what happened. There are several types of PC, and each form affects the heart muscle in a different way, but the rarest form is arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, ARVC. As misfortune would have it, this is what Peter Bekowski had. ARVC is caused by the death of healthy heart muscle and its replacement with scar tissue and fat. This results in a disorganized structure of heart muscle tissues, causing abnormal electrical activities, arrhythmia, and problems with the heart's contraction. Basically, Peter Bekowski's heart was a ticking time bomb and his physical exertion from walking miles in the snow coupled with the caffeine in the soda that he drank and his excitement at playing berserk had been too much for his already damaged heart. In fact, the autopsy indicated that he had had a mild heart attack three weeks before he died. It's a good guess to surmise that today's reports in the Urban Legend, claiming Bekowski was obese, came from the fact that it was reported in autopsy reports that his heart was encased in a layer of fat, which it was, but this was not from being overweight. It was a result of ARVC. Bekowski did not die from berserk. The game did not kill him. Evil Otto has no malevolent powers outside of his 8-bit badness. Bekowski had just the misfortune of having a bad heart. But legends ache to be born, writhe beneath the surface of wonder and bloom in the minds of creative storytellers like little rogue children clamoring for the freedom of the streets. Such is the legend of berserks alleged hand in the death of Jeff Daley, the game's second victim, a ridiculous rumor that needs to be settled once and for all. Jeff Daley and the rumor of his 6-6-6-6 death after playing berserk rose six months later, gotta love it, as a copycat story of the Bekowski incident after video game magazine made mention of the death of Bekowski after playing berserk. Post publication, the new legend was repeated in a small independent gaming magazine called Video Ace, which released two issues in 1981 before going defunct. According to this publication, 19-year-old Jeffrey Daley of Virginia, prior to Bekowski's death, had suffered a massive heart attack on January 12, 1981 after playing berserk for hours and died at the scene. His ending score was allegedly 16,660, mysteriously containing the number of the beast 6-6-6, the biblical sign of the devil. But what is problematic, if not thoroughly cancels out any previous reports as evidence, is Jeffrey Daley, aged 18, interned at Holly Lawn Cemetery in Suffolk City, Virginia and he didn't die playing berserk in January of 1981. He died in a car crash on May 29, 1981 and had been nowhere near an arcade or a berserk machine. Also, his score of 16,660 is not considered even by 80s standards to be that impressive of a score, let alone one that would take hours to accumulate. A good player can rack 16,000 up in under 20 minutes, 25 at the longest. Whoever wrote the initial story on Jeff Daley was clearly not familiar with the game berserk. There's no way possible to play hours on a game of berserk on one quarter and only get 16,000, observers berserk champion Grant Thyneman. If Evil Auto wasn't a part of the game, I would then agree. In the 80s video craze era, people, and especially Hollywood, were eager to entertain the idea that video games had ethereal supernatural powers, or were at least compelled to perpetuate those fallacies for profit. Technology was evolving at such an accelerated rate that with its propulsion came a certain level of public paranoia concerning if whether the future might see an Orwellian rise of machines take over mankind. You see this paranoid mindset over and over again in creative themes from the 80s, in movies and stories, like the short from Nightmares in 1983, The Bishop of Battle, or the movie The Last Starfighter, where the protagonist finds himself chosen as a savior by an alien race from another world because he can beat a certain video game. In Bishop of Battle, the protagonist finds himself being controlled by the game that he seeks to beat. Tron exemplifies this paranoid concept completely as well, where the player becomes part of a game in a world where a program rules them all. The urban legend of Polybius grew from such paranoid if creative ideologies as well. Video game technologies, and just plain video games in the 80s, were something most members of the average public did not understand, with even more confusion surrounding how they affected people long-term, especially children. No one knew just how video games, if ever, affected us, and to be frank, there was simply no way of even telling. Even now, decades later, we're still trying to figure that one out. However, there is something to the Berserk legends, something I found completely by accident. Perhaps not a supernatural manifestation, like a skull-faced ghost demon in the night, but there is some curious fog on the road of its history. For no other game in the history of the arcade catalog has as many myths surrounding it with actual facts as Berserk does, including Polybius. And even more curious is that one of the most unknown events never written about is actually true. I'll give you the details of this true little-known story of Berserk when Weird Darkness returns. If you or someone you know struggles with depression, or dark thoughts, I'd like to recommend the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. There, I've gathered resources to help fight depression with the Seven Cups app, connecting you with people who have also struggled with depression and are there to lift you up, even professional listeners there to listen at all hours of the day. If you're having dark thoughts of harming yourself or worse, there's the suicide prevention lifeline that you can either call or chat online with anytime 24-7. The folks at ifred.org are doing what they can with research and education on depression to give us the tools we need to fight against it in the days ahead. These resources are absolutely free and there when you need them on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com. Out of all of the Berserk legends, there is one in which few know anything about. Until now, it has never been written about and only discussed in private conversations. The reason being is the memory of it is too painful for those who are there. Another reason is the witnesses save too have been lost for over 30 years after the crash turned arcades into veritable ghost towns and people went their separate ways. The other reason is true tragic tales are often fogged in by an intentional act of mercy. On an unusually warm Monday night, on March 20, 1988, Edward Clark Jr., 17, of Lansing, Illinois, found himself at Friar Tuck's game room in Calamity City, the very same arcade that Bakowski had died at in 1982. Prior to arriving, he had been hanging out for a while at the River Oaks Mall across from Friar Tuck's game room. The young man was no stranger to mischief, having been already in trouble half a dozen times by the time he was 15. Nothing serious, other than he had a problem with authority and an attitude to match. Having been selected to enlist in the Army Reserve's Green Beret just days prior, his mother was confident her son was moving in the right direction with his life. Upon entering the arcade with his friends, Clark headed first for the battle zone, had a few games, and then stepped to the berserk machine, the same one Bakowski had played. Seeing the game had a couple of quarters up on the glass, but no one was around, Clark took a quarter, put it in the game, and began to play. Someone immediately stepped from around a row of games claiming ownership of the quarter, which was a lie, and wanting his money back. His name was Pedro Roberts, and he was not someone you wanted to mess with for any reason at any time. At the age of 16, Pedro Roberts was already showing distressing signs of a young man heading for early incarceration. He was street smart, tough, and emotionally void of empathy when angered or engaged in conflict. Clark refused to give him his quarterback or get off the game. Some threats were thrown around, with Roberts demanding that Clark get off or else. Clark ignored him and kept playing the game. Roberts then began a fight with one of Clark's friends, pushing him in the chest. Some witnesses reported that he pulled a knife and threatened Clark and his friends with it. However, court records claim the report of a knife inside the arcade was ruled out due to inconclusive evidence on grounds of hearsay. I'm not sure what happened between them prior, if there had been some bad blood for a while or what? Tom Blankley, former owner of Friar Tux Recalls. I remember someone saying Clark had stolen Robert's girlfriend or something. I don't know if that's true, but whatever it was, it got out of hand pretty quickly and they beat each other up pretty good before we, the arcade security, kicked them all out. According to fragmented and conflicting incident reports, including testimony both from Blankley and a reported eyewitness, the two young men got into an argument, that a fistfight over who had the right to play the game berserk or maybe just a swearing match. No one knows for sure. Court records report that Clark stepped in to defend his friend being beat by Roberts. An arcade attendant on hand separated the two and, fearing it would escalate further if he kicked them both out at the same time, kept Clark inside as he sent Roberts off into the night. The attendant waited 10 minutes before he allowed Clark to leave, telling him to walk the opposite way. Edward Clark foolishly did not heed the attendant's advice. According to Blankley, Clark walked with his friends in the same direction where Roberts and his friends had gone and hiding in an alleyway, Roberts jumped out, ran across a small parking lot and attacked Clark, stabbing him with a knife in the chest. Not thinking he was seriously injured, Clark refused to allow his friends to drive him to a hospital. Until moments later and near collapse, he was bundled into the back of a friend's car and driven at high speed to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after from a stab wound in the heart. One witness claims he died in the back seat of the car. Pedro Roberts was tried and convicted in May of 1990 after spending two years in jail pending trial. He was sentenced to prison for 11 years for the murder of Edward Clark Jr. Yet since his stabbing of Clark was ruled self-defense by the court, after Roberts made a plea deal, he was eligible for parole after serving only three years in prison. Curiously enough and more akin to the Polybius urban legend, Pedro Roberts served his sentence at Marion Prison in Southern Illinois, the prison that implemented a behavioral modification program entitled Control and Rehabilitation Effort, or CARE, beginning in 1968. Marion Prison pioneered lockdown techniques and sensory deprivation for the proliferation of mind control experiments using young prisoners as guinea pigs. Whether Roberts was subjected to these experiments is unknown. Given his young age upon incarceration, it is surely probable. When Alan McNeill designed the game Berserk in 1980, he claims he got the idea after having a dream in which he fought robots against a stark and colorless landscape. Reminiscent of the Robot Doomsday Weapons in Fred Saberhaken's 1967 science fiction series Berserkers, the game mimics the robot's attempts to annihilate all living beings after taking control of its programmers. So it's rather interesting to discover that without players having the knowledge found in a series of books, the game still managed to convey the very same thematic imagery to the public and turn it into a legend that the machine, or game, had the power to manipulate events outside its circuitry. Even today, with the barrage of school and public shootings, video games have been blamed for their supposed manipulative effects, suspected of inciting violence, sexual debauchery and anti-social behaviors of every sort, just like Nickelodeon's swing music, television and rock and roll allegedly did before them. The paranoia of the video age of the 80s is alive and well even now in the 21st century, as humans are still scrambling to make sense of what all this technology means to us, and more importantly, how it might affect us. Honestly, we may never know. As human beings, we search for the magical, the flamboyantly mythological, and the seemingly malevolent as a way of coping with natural occurrences, negative and positive that happen in our lives. It's in our nature to seek blame for the dark and often cold, shadowy sides of our humanity, and pass it on so we don't have to take the blame. We are flawed, amazingly flawed, and so much so that we often can't see our own flaws, or the flaws in others. However, the reality of it is this. Video games are just video games. They can't make us do anything we aren't already predisposed to do. We possess the controls that inhibit or exhibit our own actions. We are the berserkers. We are the machines. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with someone you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. And please leave a rating and review of the show in the podcast app you listen from. Doing so helps the show to get noticed. You can also email me anytime with your questions or comments through the website at WeirdDarkness.com. That's also where you can find all of my social media, listen to free audiobooks, shop the Weird Darkness store, sign up for the newsletter to win monthly prizes, find my other podcast, Church of the Undead, and more. Plus, if you have a true paranormal or creepy tale to tell, you can click on Tell Your Story or call the dark line toll free at 1-877-277-5944. That's 1-877-277-5944. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The Polybius Conspiracy was written by Ryan Hulahan for inputmag.com. The Berserk Death Curse was written by Kat Despira. Weird Darkness is a production and trademark of Marlar House Productions. Copyright Weird Darkness. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Jeremiah 29 verse 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future. In a final thought, some people pay more attention to how much God doesn't do for them than what He does do for them. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Want to receive the commercial-free version of Weird Darkness every day? For just $5 per month, you can become a patron at WeirdDarkness.com. As a patron, you get commercial-free episodes of Weird Darkness every day. Bonus audio. And you also receive chapters of audiobooks as I narrate them, even before the authors and publishers hear them. But more than that, as a patron, you're also helping to reach people who are desperately hurting with depression and anxiety. You get the benefits of being a patron, and you also benefit others who are hurting at the same time. Become a patron at WeirdDarkness.com.