Has It Been That Long? Today* We Celebrate 10 Years Of ‘All Your Base’!

*I’m a day late, shoot me.

On February 16th, 2001, the internet was graced with the presence of its first big meme, a starting point for a new frontier of inside jokes and fuel for an absurd internet culture, years before 4chan ever existed.

Based on an old Mega Drive/Genesis game named Zero Wing, some guys over at Something Awful found the game and exploited it for its awfulness. Still others at a Starsiege: Tribes began to Photoshop several dozen images with the game’s signature line “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”, a single note in a complete trainwreck of a Japanese-to-English translation in the game’s introductory sequence. The Flash video encouraged me to research the game and I ended up playing the shoot’em up beginning to end before I began to make my own Flash movies about it with a more serious twist.

Here’s to you, AYB!