Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The internet's founding mistranslation: a stiff sentence that became a catchphrase, a remix and a piece of early meme culture. It showed how much gamers love bad localisation and a clumsy line that turns into shared language. People still use it to joke about any takeover, from a hostile office reorganisation to a console war.
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In context
Spoilers for Zero WingShow the scene
Zero Wing began as a 1989 Japanese arcade shooter. In the opening cutscene of the 1991 Sega Mega Drive conversion, released in Europe, the villain called CATS takes control of the ship's base. The Japanese line says CATS has taken over all of the player's bases; the English version was rendered as a famously garbled sentence. The cutscene also contains a mechanic announcing that somebody set up us the bomb. The clip spread online in the early 2000s.
Sources (1)
- All your base are belong to us (Wikipedia)Lead and Zero Wing transcriptReference checked
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