Crox Minor’s Internet Meme Of The Week: All Your Base Are Belong To Us

This is a Guest Post from Crox Minor, you know, she of the Unicycling Girrafes. We might be hearing more from her as the weeks progress.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us is one of the more popular memes you may have heard of while browsing the net. It originated from the very poor Japanese-to-English translation of the 1989 Japanese video game Zero Wing. The game features a (terrifying?) cybernetic half human err… thing called ‘Cats’,
who says this:

Hello gentlemen. All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction!

Or something like that.

In 1998, an animated gif of the game’s introduction was posted onto the Rage Games website, and was soon reposted onto the Zany Video Game Quotes website.

In 2000, a remix of the Zero Wing soundtrack called Invasion of the (Gabba?) Robots was released by The Laziest Men on Mars.
(Check it out, it’s pretty cool.)

In 2001, All your Base spread into mainstream culture, getting coverage from cNET.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily Mirror and The Register.

Soon, the meme’s popularity went through the roof, with graffiti being scrawled on university walls and other important buildings claiming all their base belonged to another, unspecified party. Police described it as a terrorist threat. Thousands upon thousands of parodies and remixes were uploaded to Youtube and other sites, science bloggers claiming All Your Base Pair Are Belong To Us. (According to Cromercrox, anyway.)

So, what makes this meme so insanely popular?

Is it the laughably funny Engrish? Is it the pounding techno beat in the background?  Is it Cats’ 8-bit, green, cybernetic face?

Anyhow, it is, and always will be, a jewel in internet meme history!

Look out for next week’s meme: LOLcats!