Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Jeff Minter, Less Than, nine inch nails, Polybius, trent reznor

Indie Game Polybius Was Featured In A Nine Inch Nails Music Video

If Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor had ever planned to hide just how much he enjoys video games, he has failed miserably throughout his career. But this is a new level of obvious even for Reznor. The musician wrote the original music for id Software's Quake back in 1996, after all. But the newest video for NIN' "Less Than" features the arcade-style indie game Polybius. Which is not the kind of choice we would have expected, but really, we should have. Everything about Polybius's visual style is 100% Reznor. However, we were tricked by the fact that Polybius is a PSVR exclusive. So seeing it in flat 2D is a bit…. strange. Oh, and its not like the game's background isn't the kind of thing that is completely up the Nine Inch Nails alley either.

Polybius got its start as an urban legend about an arcade game from the 1980s that reportedly induced nausea and headaches in anyone who played it. Granted, arcade cabinets for a game called Polybius did in fact exist, but the game's existence has never been authoritatively proven. So while you can google search for images of Polybius cabinets and get real-looking results, we never actually got around to proving if the game existed or if those cabinets were just elaborate hoaxes created by fans of the urban legend.

Jeff Minter, known for his work on making several Tempest-like games including Space Giraffe and TxK, worked on this new version of Polybius for PSVR. Allegedly, Trent Reznor was so taken with the game that he called up the developer so he could get one of the only copies of the game's PC version to include in the video.

Talk about fanservice.

You can see Polybius in all its flat PC glory in the music video below.

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