The Cabinet Podcast

It’s a video game urban legend so big one podcast couldn’t tell the whole story. You’re in for a Halloween treat, gamers, as four other shows join the Cabinet Podcast to tell the story of Polybius. This is Arcade Anthology: Polybius Rises featuring the Cabinet Podcast, Conspeared, 2 Girls on a Bench, Karaok Big E, and the Totally Unreal Book Club. When the screens go dark, Polybius rises. Trick or Treat, gamers. (Part of the All the Horror collaboration.)

They live to play their video games. The most extreme cases die during extended play sessions. They are the Marathon Men, young men who binge on their desired digital worlds for hours or even days on end. However, one country's answer to the problem is more dangerous than the behavior it tries to fix. On this episode of the Cabinet, you'll find that reality can be more frightening than any ghost story we can tell.

Stone walls. Green acidic pools. Names written in blood.

Not exactly what you would expect to find in spreadsheet software. Inside Microsoft's Excel 95 hides this digital room of horror. Was it just a clever video game hidden inside the program for marketing purposes, or was it, as some claimed, a representation of Hell itself and its dark ruler?

The Cabinet is taking you on a journey through time, gamers, back to 1995, to find Microsoft's dreaded Hall of Tortured Souls.

We're safe. The monsters in the game will stay on the other side of the screen. That is until they don't. Gamers who have been experimenting with a mod for the P.C. version of the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind are being stalked by something sinister. It's in their dreams. It's in the dark hallways. It's standing over them while they sleep.

Is it hallucination, a figment of a disturbed imagination, or did the players will this creature into the real world?

Take a deep breath, gamers, as you look inside the Cabinet for the Assassin from Morrowind's JVK mod.

In the Season 2 premiere of the Cabinet Podcast, the show gets back to its roots with a tale of another haunted arcade cabinet. NBA Jam is a classic of the early 1990s. The cartoony graphics, over the top plays, insanely popular catchphrases of its color commentator, and the biggest names in the NBA at the time made this a go to machine to spend your quarters. However, beyond the bright colors and Looney Tunes action is a dark secret. One basketball great may still be playing the game after his death inside the digital world of NBA Jam.