Zero Wing Saga

[A cultural history lesson from an alert diary reader]

Hey Ian...

Here's a little background info you might find enjoyable. The link on your page that used to lead to an Advertiser mockup (I don't suppose you managed to download the picture before it got taken down?) and now has a bomb message is especially funny for those in the know.

Sometime in the '80s, there was a shooter game called Zero Wing for the Sega Genesis, made by a company called Toaplan that unfortunately went bankrupt in 1995. The game began with a short introduction that basically explains why you are the last hope for the galaxy.

The memorable thing about the intro is how *horribly* it was translated into English. Now, it's not unusual to find strange English phrases popping up every so often in games, but the *entire* intro followed the same bad English.

This great target for ridicule managed to lie under most people's radars until somehow, people revived it and it exploded (no pun intended) into a cult phenomenon on the 'Net. It snowballed, some mainstream media apparently even reported on it, and now certain sentences from the intro have become catch phrases. One such phrase is the title by which the intro is most often known: "All you base are belong to us." Another phrase is: "Someone set us up the bomb." Hence the phrase used in that bomb picture.

(Personally, as a Mac user, I find that bomb picture pretty cute. As someone who knows about the Zero Wing thing, it's hilarious!)

As with all things that suddenly explode into fame, people get tired of hearing about them over and over, so by now the "All Your Base" thing has become a bit passé. But it's still pretty funny. =)

Here are some sites to look at if you want to know more about this fad:

http://www.planetstarseige.com/allyourbase/

- You can see an animated GIF of the original game intro here. There's also a Shockwave version (lots of Shockwave versions going around, you're sure to find others) if you click on "Intro" on the left side.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/genesis/game/31239.html

- Gamefaqs.com is one of the best sources of gaming tips and tricks. Click on "FAQ" and read the history of Zero Wing. (This FAQ is where I got most of the information written here.) You can also get a better translation of the original Japanese.