You have no chance to survive make your time

All your base are belong to us history

Back in 1989, when video games were still very crude, an early game known as ZERO WING was released with several bits of digitized voice.. The problem was, it contained really awful English, translated from Japanese. So bad, it was funny. So funny, several lines caught on as catch phrases. The dialogue of Zero Wing contains such gems as "Somebody set up us the bomb," "Take off every Zig for great justice" and a chilling warning from a villain known only as Cats; "All your base are belong to us".

Then some creative people, we're not sure who was first - started the trend of doctoring regular Internet culture images with the phrase, and trading them among friends. Quickly, people joined suit, and a whole culture of image manipulators began designing their own versions. Some good, some great, some lame... but almost all, very creative image manipulation. At some point, Kansas City computer programmer and part-time deejay Jeffrey Ray Roberts sampled the quote and added an annoyingly catchy dance track. "I did it for the sheer inside-joke value," he says. "Everyone was trying to one-up each other." Next came a two-minute music video, and soon "All your base!" was being yelled out of dorm windows on campuses around the country. The MP3 and video were the turning point that brought the joke from obscurity to mainstream pop culture.

All Your Base spread from office to office via e-mail like a benign virus. The video was creative, funny, and catchy. Eventually, media started writing about the phenomenon. This was bigger than the DANCING BABY, which was the last big Internet culture joke. Even today, although the boom of excitement may have passed, new people find out about it every day. You can still see references and ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US displays appearing in odd places, both on and offline.

The phrase or some variation of lines from the game has appeared in numerous articles, books, comics, clothing, movies, radio shows, songs, television shows, video games, webcomics, and websites. Notable mentions include:

• In late 2000, Kansas City computer programmer and part-time DJ Jeffrey Ray Roberts of the Gabber band The Laziest Men on Mars made a techno dance track, "Invasion of the Gabber Robots", which remixed some of the Zero Wing video game music by Tatsuya Uemura with a voiceover phrase "All your base are belong to us."


• On February 23, 2001, Wired provided an early report on the phenomenon, covering it from the Flash animation to its spread through e-mail and Internet forums to T-shirts bearing the phrase.


• On April 1, 2003, in Sturgis, Michigan, seven people 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 claimed to be playing an April Fool's joke but most people who saw the signs were unfamiliar with the phrase. 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."


• In February 2004, North Carolina State University students and members of The Wolf Web in Raleigh, North Carolina exploited a web-based service provided for local schools and businesses to report a weather-related closing to display the phrase within a news ticker on a live news broadcast on News 14 Carolina.


• On June 1, 2006, the video hosting website YouTube was taken down temporarily for maintenance. The phrase "ALL YOUR VIDEO ARE BELONG TO US" appeared below the YouTube logo as a placeholder while the site was down. Some users believed the site had been hacked, leading the host to add the message "No, we haven't been hacked. Get a sense of humor."

 

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