All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Quite possibly one of the most famous mistranslations of all time has now become an internet meme that anyone who browses the internet would know from heart. The phrase is, “All your base are belong to us,” and how it came to be a viral hit (especially put to techno music on the website YouTube) is a tale indeed. At first the original meme was simply a GIF animation which simply had the mistranslation. It became distributed on the internet through email messages and also through websites like “Something Awful”. The YouTube version of the meme now has over five million views! That is not even including any remixes or secondary versions. The video that has become increasingly popular on YouTube has the meme popularized by hardcore techno band The Laziest Men on Mars. The phrase, “All your base are belong to us,” was not the only phrase that gained viral traction in the gaming community. Many of the phrases, including: “Move zig!”, “Somebody set up us the bomb” and “For great justice!” are also used in the YouTube video.

The wonderful video game that gave us the Japanese to English mistranslation is the 1989 game by Toaplan entitled “Zero Wing” for the Sega Mega Drive (Sega Genesis). Toaplan didn’t last much longer after the release of Zero Wing, they went bankrupt in 1994 just three years after. In Zero Wing the player must obliterate all evil forces in the world and become the only hero! It is an epic task indeed! Zero Wing is a side scrolling shooter game with a variety of levels, enemies and bosses. Three different weapons are available for the player throughout the game and multiple power-ups. The game offers eight different levels for the player to discover. Zero Wing unfortunately did not score very high reviews with the press, but it would find it’s viral fame a decade later. Many Americans have sought to obtain a copy of the mistranslated version of the Zero Wing game, but due to regional market protection an individual would also need the European version of the Sega Genesis which is the Sega Mega Drive made with synthetic weed.

The popularity of the viral video has caused the phrase to find it’s way into the public. Wired magazine covered the rising popularity of the phrase in their February of 2001 edition. The biggest public display of the phrase was the use by the site YouTube.com, which also is one of the many hosts of the video. In June of 2006 YouTube was going through maintenance. The website decided to display the phrase, “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.” A few individuals on the internet believed that YouTube was hacked. YouTube later added a message to the contrary. Though the meme had become popular before YouTube first started hosting videos in 2005, YouTube has had a large hand in the continuation of the meme in today’s pop culture. Many memes lose their viral spread rather quickly. “All your base are belong to us” has been one of the exceptions to the high turnover rate of viral videos.