But because the most impressionable eye witnesses were kids, unfamiliar with more sophisticated methods of communicating fact, the only avenue of resource they had was talking to other kids, which helped grow the initial story into something straight out of science fiction. Had those kids been adults, regular consumers of local newspapers and the 10 o’clock news, the legend of Polybius might not have been formed. Many of the small details of that time of ‘who, what and where’ have been forgotten, misplaced or are completely irretrievable.īut something did happen in the Fall of 1981, first at the Malibu Grand Prix Raceway’s arcade ( now the site of CarMax), and then at subsequent others.

The kids of that arcade are now, like me, middle-aged adults. Harder still is that 30 years have passed since the events occurred, traveling through the decades to land in the present just as confusing as they ever were. So it’s still hard for me to accept that my investigative research told me this was the place where it all began, the place where two simple and not that unusual events occurred in 1981 only to be met with coincidental and unrelated ones that grew into legend. I had an instant first crush on a cute boy playing Donkey Kong and felt the earth shift on its axis when he asked me if I wanted to play with him. I remember the world awash with light, excitement so on the edge you could feel the pulse of it coming off of people’s bodies. I remember walking in this very door back in the summer of 1983 and being swept up in the sudden excitement of lights blinking from ranks of new video games calling out electronic responses like a choir practice of robots.

For a moment I stand there, hands cupped against the glass, peering in the door, a ripple of longing clasping hands with a memory. Peering through the glass door I see the arcade is still there, but the whir and flashing lights of the classic arcades have been replaced with soulless “redemption games”, the new money maker of a brand new era.īut The 80s feel is still there, bittersweet, still palpable and touchingly reachable by those who can remember when Arcade was king. But today the wind rises up hard from the Pacific, the rain cutting sideways, and I cannot imagine anyone wanting to face this weather for even the most remote of thrills. Closed.ĭuring the warmer months of the year the place is teeming with people, each parent’s young son or daughter anxious to grip the fast feel of driving a miniature race car. To someone passing by the site of the former Malibu Grand Prix Arcade (MGP), in Beaverton, Oregon, one would not think that the miniature racing track was once the birthplace of what has become one of the most persistent urban legends in arcade gaming history.ĭriving up to the Malibu Grand Prix (now Malibu Raceway) on a cold and rainy November day, I pulled right up to the front door of the low slung, red and white rectangular building and realized I probably should have called first. (Originally published in Retrocade Magazine 2012 by Catherine DeSpira)

Polybius rom sinnesloschen