| "All your
base are belong to us" (sometimes abbreviated
AYBABTU or simply AYB) is a phrase that sparked
an Internet phenomenon that occurred in 2001 and
2002. The phenomenon initially took the form of
the sentence appearing on the Something Awful
Forums. Many images were digitally altered so
that the phrase was added in, either obviously
or discreetly. Eventually these were collected
together onto one site and a Flash animation produced
from them, which was widely downloaded.
The phrase arose from a poor translation used in the English
version of the Japanese video game Zero Wing,
originally produced by Toaplan in 1989. The infamous
quotations were taken from the European localization
of the Sega Mega Drive port released in 1992.
The arcade version of Zero Wing does not include
the quote, nor any other dialogue; the intro for
the PC Engine version has CD quality spoken dialogue,
but has a completely different introduction. Zero
Wing was never released in North America, and
therefore never came to the Sega Genesis, the
North American Mega Drive.
"All Your Base" was interesting in that it demonstrated
the power of the Internet to quickly spread idiosyncratic
messages that would never have been covered by
the traditional mass media. Although the fad has
since died down, the phrase continues to be one
of the most commonly quoted examples of "Engrish".
The phrase is also often used as a battle cry
on many competitive video games, particularly
ones played over the Internet.
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