All Your Base Are Belong To Us

1992

Date: 1992 origin, 2000-2001 viral peak · Place: Sega Mega Drive port of Zero Wing, Japan · Tribal War forums, USA · Figures: Toaplan, original developer · Bad translator, unknown · Bad_CRC, Tribal War forum user · Tags: Mistranslation, Image Macro Wave, Flash 01. Someone Set Up Us The Bomb Toaplan ports the arcade shooter Zero Wing to the Sega Mega Drive in 1992. The European release adds a cutscene whose English translation is among the worst ever committed to ROM. The villain CATS announces: All your base are belong to us. The captain replies: For great justice. The lines circulate quietly in emulator scene chat through the late 1990s as a private joke about awful localisation. 02. Tribal War Photoshops The World In late 2000, the Tribal War gaming forum starts a thread Photoshopping the phrase onto everything: highway signs, the White House, the moon. A Flash video by user Bad_CRC, scored to a Laziest Men On Mars techno track, hits Newgrounds in February 2001 and the format crosses over into broadcast TV, USA Today, and a Wired feature within weeks. It is arguably the first image macro to dominate the wider internet from a single hour's worth of source material. The grammar of format a phrase, paste it on anything is the entire blueprint of 2010s meme culture, prefigured. Sources • Wired, 'It's the World's Bomb' (Tony Long, 23 February 2001) • Know Your Meme, 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us' • USA Today, 'Net joke takes off, takes flight' (26 February 2001)