All your base are belong to us

"All your base are belong to us" is a stock phrase arising from a poor translation used in the Sega Genesis version of the Japanese video game Zero Wing (the arcade version of Zero Wing does not include the quote). It is sometimes abbreviated AYBABTU.

The phrase is simply one line from the game's primitive cut scenes, all of which are subtitled and very poorly translated. In late 2000 and early 2001 a huge number of altered pictures, GIF animations, and Macromedia Flash animation exploiting the popularity of this phrase swept over the Internet and just as suddenly seemed to slow to a crawl. Used as a caption for almost any photograph since the heavily-overloaded word "base" (along with homophones such as bass and compounds like base pair) seemed to make the phrase mean almost anything.

It is an example of Engrish, which is the misuse of English-like phrases in Japanese.

The cut scene transcript goes as follows:

  In A.D. 2101
  War was beginning

  Captain: What happen?
  Mechanic: Somebody 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 ....
  Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!!
  Operator: You know what you doing.
  Captain: Move 'Zig'.
  Captain: For great justice.  

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) and "Somebody set up us the bomb" (basically "uh-oh!").

The AYBABTU phenomenon is constantly 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 constantly 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, their timing was a few years too late and no one got the joke. Many residents were upset that the signs appeared while the U.S. was at war with Iraq, and the police chief Eugene Alli said the signs could be, "a borderline terrorist threat depending on what someone interprets it to mean." [1] (http://wwmt.com/engine.pl?station=wwmt&id=468&template=breakout_local.html)

All yuor base are belong to us, seemingly arising from a misspelling of "all your base are belong to us", has also taken on a life of its own.

External links

• Hubert's history of AYBABTU (http://www.tvsian.com/hubert/article.php?sid=1)
• All your base are belong to us tune & video (http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/video3.shtml)
• The All your base (http://www.dvorakgame.co.uk/cardlist.cgi?allyourbase) Dvorak game deck.