# All Your Base Are Belong To Us > All Your Base Are Belong To Us is a mistranslated phrase from the 1991 Zero Wing arcade game that became one of the internet's first mainstream memes in 2001 through viral Flash animations and Photoshopped image macros. "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" is a broken English catchphrase from the 1991 European Sega Mega Drive port of the Japanese arcade shooter Zero Wing. The botched translation of the game's opening cutscene spread through gaming forums in the late 1990s before exploding into one of the internet's first mainstream memes in early 2001, spawning thousands of Photoshopped images, a viral Flash music video, and real-world references that persist decades later. ## Origin Zero Wing launched as a Japanese arcade game on July 1, 1989, developed by Toaplan and published by Namco[7]. The arcade version didn't contain the infamous intro cutscene. That came with the European Sega Mega Drive port in July 1991, which added the poorly translated opening sequence between CATS and the ship's captain[5]. The meme's first known digital appearance traces back to the late 1990s. A GIF of the opening sequence was posted on the now-defunct Rage Games website around mid-1998[14]. When Rage Games shut down, the GIF migrated to Zany Video Game Quotes in late 1998 or early 1999, submitted by a user named Seymont[14]. This version began circulating slowly through gaming communities. In June 2000, Overclock.org posted their "Zero Wing Dub Project," featuring a dubbed version of the intro with Wayne Newton's voice, marking one of the first creative responses to the phrase[4]. That same summer, the quote started infecting Something Awful's forums, appearing in signatures and getting posted regularly across threads[14]. - **Platform:** Zany Video Game Quotes (GIF source), Something Awful / TribalWar forums (Photoshop explosion), Newgrounds (Flash video) - **Creator:** Toaplan (game developer), Bad_CRC (Flash music video creator), Jeffrey Ray Roberts (musician, "Invasion of the Gabber Robots"), Starscream (first Photoshop edit on Something Awful) - **Date:** 1998-2001 (originated 1991, went viral 2001) ## Overview "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" comes from a hilariously mangled English translation of the opening cutscene in Zero Wing's Sega Mega Drive port. In the scene, the villain CATS appears on the bridge of a starship to announce that he's taken over all the player's bases. The original Japanese line, "君達の基地は、全てCATSがいただいた," roughly translates to "All of your bases have been taken over by CATS"[8]. What players got instead was a string of grammatical disasters: "Somebody set up us the bomb," "You have no chance to survive make your time," and the crown jewel, "All your base are belong to us"[2]. The entire script reads like someone fed Japanese through a blender and reassembled whatever came out. According to Toaplan programmer Tatsuya Uemura, the translation was handled by a design team member in charge of overseas business, not a professional translator. Uemura admitted the team member's English skills were "really terrible"[5]. ## How It Spread The meme's Photoshop era began on Something Awful in November 2000. A thread titled "ALL YUOR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!!" (misspelled in the title) kicked off what became an avalanche of doctored images[14]. The first edit, a skeleton from Army of Darkness, was created by a user called Starscream, who had also made the earlier Alf speech bubble edit back in September 2000[14]. By the end of the first page, dozens of users were competing to place the phrase onto street signs, magazine covers, billboards, and restaurant awnings. The Guardian described the "remarkable" time and effort spent making words fit perfectly into backgrounds, matching fonts and perspective[1]. The thread generated over 2,000 images before forum hacking destroyed much of it[4]. Participants took the concept back to their own forums, with TribalWar.com picking up the torch on December 16, 2000[14]. Around the same time, Jeffrey Ray Roberts, a Kansas City computer programmer and part-time DJ performing as The Laziest Men on Mars, created "Invasion of the Gabber Robots," a techno track sampling the Zero Wing dialogue[5]. On February 16, 2001, TribalWar forum member Bad_CRC uploaded a Flash music video pairing Roberts' track with the Photoshopped images to Newgrounds[5]. This video was the ignition point. It spread at an alarming rate, jumping from gaming forums to the wider internet within days[3]. By late February 2001, the phrase was among the most searched terms on internet search engines[1]. Wired covered it on February 23[3]. The Guardian, USA Today, and the San Francisco Chronicle all published articles[4]. The Lycos 50 list of top searches picked it up[15]. T-shirts, mugs, and mouse mats flooded sites like CafePress[1]. The UK's Popbitch message board introduced the craze to British audiences[1]. ## How to Use The classic "All Your Base" format involves Photoshopping the phrase onto real-world signs, buildings, products, or screens to suggest a fictional takeover. Common approaches include: 1. Take a photo of a sign, billboard, storefront, or official document 2. Replace the existing text with "All your base are belong to us" or a variation like "All your [X] are belong to us" 3. Match the font, color, and perspective of the original text for maximum effect ## Cultural Impact "All Your Base" was arguably the first internet meme to cross over into mainstream media coverage. In March 2001, USA Today described it as "a kind of Web fungus" that "grabbed the attention of thousands"[15]. Wired called it proof that "armies of marketers toiling for years can't figure out how to grab Web-users' attention, and then a flash file with screen-shots from an outdated arcade game accompanied by clumsy subtitles conquers the world"[3]. The Guardian's Rich Johnston noted the missed commercial opportunity: "If Sega had attached its name to the original animation, new life may have been breathed into its now cancelled Sega Dreamcast console. If Nike had placed their swoosh upon it, they'd have cleaned up"[1]. This observation about brand-adjacent virality was remarkably prescient for 2001. The meme's reach extended into government and politics. The 2003 Sturgis, Michigan sign incident resulted in police involvement[5]. The 2004 TV ticker hack in Raleigh forced News 14 Carolina to overhaul their weather closure reporting system[9]. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 2019 tweet using the phrase showed the meme still carried cultural currency nearly two decades after its peak[5]. Multiple video games paid tribute. World of Warcraft included a "For Great Justice" ability[10], and Guild Wars featured it as a warrior shout skill[12]. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild hid "all your base are" in its fictional script language during the E3 2016 demo[5]. ## Fun Facts - The Zany Video Game Quotes site owner, who helped popularize the original GIF, became so exasperated by the meme's explosion that he posted a front-page plea begging people to stop: "jokes stop being funny when they become catch phrases"[3]. - Jeffrey Ray Roberts, who created the iconic "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" track as The Laziest Men on Mars, passed away in 2011 at age 33[5]. - YouTube's 2006 "ALL YOUR VIDEO ARE BELONG TO US" message accidentally included its own grammar error: "No, we haven't be hacked" instead of "haven't been hacked"[13]. - The original Japanese dialogue by CATS uses a polite grammatical form that's respectful toward the Federation army while being rude to the listeners, creating an ironic tone completely lost in the English translation[8]. - The first "All Your Base" Photoshop edit was a picture of Alf on the phone with a speech bubble, created by Something Awful user Starscream in September 2000[14]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is "All Your Base Are Belong to Us"? It's a broken English phrase from the opening cutscene of Zero Wing's 1991 European Sega Mega Drive port that became one of the internet's first major memes in 2001, spawning thousands of Photoshopped images and a viral Flash video[4]. ### Where did "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" come from? The phrase originates from a poor Japanese-to-English translation in the video game Zero Wing, developed by Toaplan in 1989. The Mega Drive port released in Europe in 1991 contained the botched translation[5]. ### What does "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" mean? It's a garbled version of "All of your bases have been taken over by CATS," spoken by the game's villain. It's used online as a humorous declaration of dominance or takeover[2]. ### How do you use "All Your Base Are Belong to Us"? The most common format is Photoshopping the phrase onto real-world signs and images, or using the snowclone "All your [X] are belong to us" to joke about any kind of takeover[6]. ### Is "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" still popular? While its peak was in early 2001, the phrase still gets referenced in gaming, politics, and tech culture. Elon Musk used a variation in 2014[4], AOC tweeted it in 2019[5], and Bitwave Games' 2023 Zero Wing rerelease drew attention back to the original source[11]. ### What game is "All Your Base" from? Zero Wing, a side-scrolling arcade shooter developed by Toaplan in 1989. The meme specifically comes from the European Sega Mega Drive port's intro cutscene, not the original arcade version[7]. ### Who made the "All Your Base" Flash video? TribalWar forum member Bad_CRC created and uploaded the Flash music video to Newgrounds on February 16, 2001. It paired Photoshopped images with "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" by The Laziest Men on Mars[5]. ### Why was the translation so bad? According to Toaplan programmer Tatsuya Uemura, the translation was done by a design team member handling overseas business rather than a professional translator, and their English skills were "really terrible"[5]. ### What is "For Great Justice"? It's a spinoff catchphrase from the same Zero Wing cutscene. The ship's captain says "For great justice" as his final line, and internet users adopted it as a humorous suffix for everyday statements[2]. ### Did YouTube really use the phrase? Yes. On June 1, 2006, YouTube displayed "ALL YOUR VIDEO ARE BELONG TO US" during site maintenance. When users thought they'd been hacked, YouTube added a note telling people to "get a sense of humor"[13]. ### Was anyone arrested for using the phrase? In Sturgis, Michigan in 2003, seven people placed signs with the quote around town as an April Fools' joke. Police chief Eugene Alli called the signs "a borderline terrorist threat" given the US was at war with Iraq, though the pranksters claimed it was just a joke[5]. ### Why was the 2023 Zero Wing rerelease controversial? Bitwave Games released the original 1989 arcade version on Steam, which didn't include the famous intro cutscene, despite referencing the meme on the store page. After criticism, they patched in a reimagined version of the CATS scene[11]. ## References 1. [All your base . . . | Technology | The Guardian]() 2. [All your base are belong to us - Oh Internet]() 3. [When Gamer Humor Attacks | WIRED]() 4. [All Your Base Are Belong to Us - Know Your Meme]() 5. [All your base are belong to us]() 6. [All Your Base Are Belong to Us - Urban Dictionary]() 7. [Zero Wing]() 8. [For Great Justice - TV Tropes]() 9. [Zero Wing - Wikiquote]() 10. [Wags hijack TV channel's on-screen ticker • The Register]() 11. [For Great Justice - Spell - World of Warcraft]() 12. [Zero Wing on Steam]() 13. [‘All Your Base Are Belong To Us’ Game Out On Steam, But Without Famous Meme [Update] - Kotaku]() 14. ["For Great Justice!" - Guild Wars Wiki (GWW)]() 15. [All your base are belong to us - Official Video Site - Planet Tribes]() 16. [YouTube: Our humor, not our hack - CNET]() 17. [Hubert]() 18. [USATODAY.com]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/all-your-base-are-belong-to-us Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library