The original game has not been proven to exist. Snopes.com, a popular Web site cataloguing urban legends, concludes the game is a modern-day version of 1980s rumors of "men in black"—in this case, visiting arcades and taking down the names of high scorers at arcade games. This led to the hypothesis that the government was hosting some sort of experiment and sending subliminal messages to the players. Magazines of the time period dedicated to electronic gaming make no mention of a "Polybius", and mainstream news also fails to note such a game. While a number of mockup cabinets and games inspired by the myth do exist, no authentic cabinets or ROM dumps have ever been located. Ben Silverman of Yahoo! Games remarked: "Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the game ever existed, no less turned its users into babbling lunatics ... Still, "Polybius" has enjoyed cult-like status as a throwback to a more technologically paranoid era."