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All your base are belong to us

"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, also known as the Sega Genesis, port of the 1989 Japanese arcade game.

By the early 2000s, a GIF animation depicting the opening text became widespread on web forums. A music video accompanied by an EDM 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.

History

Zero Wing was released in Japanese arcades by developer Toaplan on 1 July 1989, and in North America in April 1990. 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.

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, OverClocked, and TribalWar forums. 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". (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. The video was shared rapidly, soon becoming an Internet meme and receiving widespread media attention. 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, used as a placeholder message by YouTube while under maintenance, and reproduced onto T-shirts.

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.

The 15th and 20th anniversaries of the posting of the remix on Newgrounds were recognized by numerous culture sites. The meme has been highlighted for its uniqueness in that, unlike other memes of the time, it lacked sexual innuendos or vulgarity.

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 12 March 2001, American comic strip Foxtrot featured the phrase spoken by one of the strip's main characters, Jason Fox. Jason approaches his parents, speaking the phrase, much to their confusion, speaking it twice more before leaving while laughing.

In Empire Earth, a 2001 real-time strategy video game developed by Stainless Steel Studios, “All your base are belong to us” is a cheat code that can be used by the player during the game to obtain 100,000 of all resources. Additionally, “Somebody set up us the bomb” is another code that gives the player an instant victory.

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".

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.

On 1 June 2006, the phrase "ALL YOUR VIDEO ARE BELONG TO US" appeared 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."

Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, two tactical multiplayer first-person shooters developed by Valve, both feature the phrase "Someone Set Up Us The Bomb" as one of the game's achievements.

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.