"All your base are belong to us" is an Internet meme based on a poorly translated phrase from the opening cutscene of the Japanese video game Zero Wing. The phrase first appeared on the European release of the 1991 Sega Mega Drive / Genesis port of the 1989 Japanese arcade game.
By the early 2000s, a GIF animation depicting the opening text became widespread on web forums.[1] A music video accompanied by an techno remix of the clip, originally posted on the comedy forum Something Awful, gained popularity and became a derivative Internet meme in its own right. The original meme has been referenced many times in media outside of the forums.
Zero Wing transcript
Below are some other examples of text as it appeared in the poorly translated English release, alongside a more accurate translation from the original Japanese.
| Original script[2] | Basic translation from Japanese[3] | English version of the game[4][lower-alpha 1] |
|---|---|---|
| 機関士：何者かによって、爆発物が仕掛けられたようです。 | Engineer: It appears someone has planted explosives. | Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb. |
| 通信士：メインスクリーンにビジョンが来ます。 | Communications Operator: Incoming visual on the main screen. | Operator: Main screen turn on. |
| CATS：連邦政府軍のご協力により、君達の基地は、全てCATSがいただいた。 | CATS: With the help of Federation government forces, CATS has taken all of your bases. | CATS: All your base are belong to us. |
| CATS：せいぜい残り少ない命を、大切にしたまえ・・・・。 | CATS: Treasure what little time you have left to live... | CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time. |
| 艦長：たのむぞ。ZIG！！ | Captain: We're counting on you, ZIG!! | Captain: Move 'ZIG'. |
| 艦長：我々の未来に希望を・・・ | Captain: May there be hope for our future... | Captain: For great justice. |
History
Zero Wing was released in Japanese arcades by developer Toaplan on 1 July 1989,[5] and in North America in April 1990.[6] The European release of the game on the Sega Mega Drive, also known as the Sega Genesis, which contained the script of the meme's origin, occurred in July 1991.[7]
Zero Wing is one of the most widely-known examples of poor linguistic translation in video games.[8]: 249–250 Translations were handled internally by the design team, not with a professional translator.[8]: 250 According to game designer Tatsuya Uemara, the English skills of the team member who prepared the translations were "really terrible".[8]: 250
The first references of the meme could be seen in 1999 and the early 2000s when an animated GIF of the scene appeared on forums and sites like Zany Video Game Quotes,[9] OverClocked,[10] and TribalWar forums.[11] In November 2000, Kansas City computer programmer and part-time disc jockey Jeffrey Ray Roberts (1977–2011), of the gabber band The Laziest Men on Mars, made a techno dance track, "Invasion of the Gabber Robots," which remixed some of the Zero Wing video game music with a voice-over of the phrase, "All your base are belong to us".[12] (The original music for Zero Wing was written by Tatsuya Uemura and arranged by Noriyuki Iwadare.) On 16 February 2001, user Bad_CRC posted an animated music video accompanying the song onto the Flash game and animation sharing site Newgrounds.[13] The video was shared rapidly, soon becoming an Internet meme and receiving widespread media attention.[14][15][16][17][18] The meme's popularity was seen throughout the early 2000s when it was broadcast unauthorized onto the ticker of a Raleigh, North Carolina, TV channel,[19] used as a placeholder message by YouTube while under maintenance,[20] and reproduced onto T-shirts.[18][12]
The meme was addressed by Toaplan representatives Tatsuya Uemura (programmer and music composer of Zero Wing and Toaplan founding member) and Masahiro Yuge (fellow Toaplan composer and founder) in interviews during the 2010s. Uemura stated that the poor English translation in the Mega Drive version was handled by a member of Toaplan in charge of export and overseas business.[21][22]
The 15th and 20th anniversaries of the posting of the remix on Newgrounds were recognized by numerous culture sites.[23][14][24] The meme has been highlighted for its uniqueness in that, unlike other memes of the time, it lacked sexual innuendos or vulgarity.[13][25]
Mentions in media
The phrase or some variation of lines from the game has appeared numerous times in films, commercials, news broadcasts, other games, and social media posts.
On 1 April 2003, in Sturgis, Michigan, seven people placed signs through the town that read: "All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time." They claimed to be playing an April Fools' joke, but most people who saw the signs were unfamiliar with the phrase. Many residents were upset that the signs appeared while the US was at war with Iraq, and police chief Eugene Alli said the signs could be "a borderline terrorist threat, depending on what someone interprets it to mean".[26]
In February 2004, North Carolina State University students and members of TheWolfWeb in Raleigh, North Carolina, exploited a web-based service used by local schools and businesses to report weather-related closures to display the phrase within a news ticker on a live news broadcast on News 14 Carolina.[19]
On 1 June 2006, the phrase "All Your Video Are Belong to Us" appeared in all-caps below the YouTube logo as a placeholder while YouTube was under maintenance. Some users believed the site had been hacked, leading YouTube to add the message "No, we haven't be [sic] hacked. Get a sense of humor."[27]
On 19 January 2019, American Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted "All your base (are) belong to us" in response to a poll by "Hill-HarrisX" indicating that 45% of the Republicans who were polled approved of Ocasio-Cortez's suggested implementation of a 70% marginal tax rate for individual income over $10 million per year.[28][29][30]
See also
- The cake is a lie – Internet meme from the video game Portal
- English as She Is Spoke – Book by Pedro Carolino
- List of Internet phenomena
- Lolcat – Image combining a photograph of a cat with text intended to contribute humour
Footnotes
- Original broken English translation as it appeared in the released video game.
References
External links
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