All your base are belong to us

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"All your base are belong to us" (sometimes abbreviated AYBABTU or simply AYB) is a stock phrase arising from an interesting translation used in the English version of the Japanese video game Zero Wing (the arcade version of Zero Wing does not include the quote). The infamous quotes were taken from the European localization of the Sega Megadrive port released in 1989. Zero Wing was never released in North America, and therefore never came to the Sega Genesis, the North American Megadrive. AYBABTU is one of the most commonly quoted examples of Engrish, which is the use of English poorly translated from Japanese.

Table of contents

1 Origins
2 Original Japanese text

2.1 Alternative Translation

3 See also
4 External links

Origins

The phrase is simply one line from the game's introductory cut scene, which is subtitled and poorly translated. It made its first appearance on the Internet in 1998. During mid-to-late 2000, the phrase began appearing in the forums of Something Awful. By the second half of February 2001 a huge number of altered pictures, GIF animations, and Macromedia Flash animations swept over the Internet - fueled in part by the use of the phrase in an online music video by someone named "Bad_CRC" using music by the Gabber group The Laziest Men on Mars (the song being called "Invasion of the Gabber Robots") - and just as suddenly seemed to slow to a crawl. It has been used as a caption for almost any photograph since the heavily overloaded word "base" (along with homonyms such as bass and compounds like base pair) seemed to make the phrase mean almost anything. Numerous persons and groups also replaced the word "base" with other topics (e.g. "all your data are belong to us," "all your vote are belong to us"), generally suggesting someone's aggressive dominance in a particular field. It is considered as having been one of the greatest fads on the Internet.

The cut scene transcript goes as follows:

In A.D. 2101

War was beginning.

Captain: What happen ?

Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.

spoken in the Flash animation as Someone 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 ....

Operator: Captain !!^*

Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!!

Captain: You know what you doing.

Captain: Move 'Zig'.

Captain: For great justice.

* This line is not in some animated GIF versions seen on the Internet.

The final phrase "for great justice" appears also to have been adopted by various groups as their slogan, and there is also some adoption of "move 'zig'" (which resembles that of "Let's Roll" - a universal command to action; the "Zig" was the name of the small fighter craft piloted by the player in Zero Wing) and "Somebody set up us the bomb" (basically "uh-oh!").

The AYBABTU phenomenon is continually declared dead, yet it is still seen on the Internet. Some people who play multiplayer games like Counter-Strike have been banned from servers for continually repeating this phrase.

On April 1, 2003, in Sturgis, Michigan, seven men aged 17 to 20 placed signs all over town that read "All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time." They said they were playing an April Fools joke by mimicking the famous Flash animation which depicted the slogan ubiquitously. Unfortunately for the young men, not many people got the joke. Many residents were upset that the signs appeared while the U.S. 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." [1]

In 2002, AYBABTU was featured in an art exhibition called Trigger: Game Art which looked at the way computer games had influenced contemporary art. [1]

Professional video games that have referenced AYBABTU:

Quake III Team Arena, where an add-on level reads All Your Base Are Belong To Us.
Warcraft III, where the single player instant victory cheat code is AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs, while the cheat code for instant defeat is SomeBodySetUpUsTheBomb.
Max Payne, where a sign in the training level advertising a "Tar Cafe" gives its address as "615 ALL YOUR BASE ARE...".
Civilization III, where defeat leads to a screen of world leaders taunting the player; one of the taunts is "All your base are belong to us!"
Starcraft, which includes a map named AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs. The map consists of two landmasses, with three bases clustered on each, linked by one long, narrow isthmus.
Mega Man Battle Network, where a corrupt program (depicted as a green robot) shouts "All your base are belong to us!!", before challenging Mega Man to a battle in the cyberspace.
Escape Velocity: Nova, where you can see Cats occasionally flying around the universe.
In Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, the player sees "All your base are belong to www.edgeofreality.com" as part of the game credits.