All Your Base Are Belong to Us by Roger J. Wendell

www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM
Line

AYBABTU

All Your Base Are Belong to Us!!

This phrase comes from a 1991 adaptation of Toaplan's "Zero Wing" arcade game for the Sega Genesis console. The phrase, displayed on the opening screen, is considered by many to be the worst Japanese-to-English translation in video game history (No offense is intended here - I have a deep respect for the Japanese people and have enjoyed some wonderful travel throughout Japan.).

Anyway, the game's opening starts with a shot of a starship bridge in chaos as "CATS," a Borg-like figure, materializes and says, ?How are you gentlemen!! All your base are belong to us!? This amusing mistranslation spread virally throughout the Internet, spawning countless hacked JPEGs displaying the "All your base are belong to us!" banner strategically embedded in the photographs.

Click Here for the Invasion of the Gabber Robots (AYBABTU) by the Laziest Men on Mars!

Some transcription for the "Zero Wing" arcade game:

In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb
Operator: We get signal
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us
Cats: You are on the way to destruction
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig'
Captain: You know what you doing
Captain: Move 'zig'
Captain: For great justice

Some more "All Your Base" banner art:

A personal note:

In early 2001 I stumbled across Enigma's "All Your Base" page and found the idea to be so hilariously funny I linked him. Unfortunately, in mid 2003, I noticed that his link was dead and there was no sign of returning life. So, I decided I would make a small effort in keeping the idea alive. My guess is that Enigma, and others, simply can't maintain the bandwidth required for such a site. I probably can't, either, but will give it a try (In 2003 my web host was already charging me $6.00 for every extra gigabyte that was being downloaded off my site). So, let me emphasize the "small" part in effort here - I have no desire to reproduce the work of Enigma and the other "All Your Base" sites. As time permits, I'll be posting just a few of the "All Your Base" stuff that catches my eye and fits on this page...

- Roger J. Wendell, Colorado

Here's what Enigma had to say about the All Your Base Internet Phenomena in early 2001:

"So, as best as I can tell, it started in the early 90's as a generic Sega Genesis game--your generic side-scroller shoot-em-up. The intro was poorly translated from Japanese to Engrish and contains quite a few grammatical errors. At some point in time, people picked up on it and started making fun of it. At some later point in time, people decided to doctor pictures and insert various phrases from the game ("All your base are belong to us" being one of the most popular). When you stop and think about it it is not very funny and even a little annoying...but when you don't, it just gets more and more funny the more and more you see and say the various phrases.
"This whole phenomena has been going on since at least December 2000. Very recently (February 2001), I picked up on it from Memepool. As I stated, it was really dumb, but something about it was just so incredibly funny that my friends and I kept saying it at work, emailing it, and ICQ'ing it across the globe. In the last couple of days, I have been hearing it from so many different people, most of which have picked up on the "joke" from all over the place.
"This is yet another example of a viral meme that will probably die off in another month...."
- Enigma