The first things were a strange time. Defeated son of George HW Bush he somehow became president, terrible troops like God It’s crazy and Staind we had songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and we settled for, say, one meme a year. In 2001, that meme was “All Your Base,” a Newgrounds music video who celebrated ironically poor Japanese-English translation of Toaplan’s 1992 Mega Drive Wing zero. Today, that video is officially 20 years old.
As with most things at the time, it is difficult to identify which website or message board first popularized the absurdity. Wing zero intro. Like most internet culture of the time, it made its way to the Something Awful forums, which preceded places like 4chan and Reddit as a hub for anonymous online discussions and general tricks.
Shortly afterwards, the intro was parodied into a song by poster and musician Something Awful and musician Jeffrey Ray Roberts, which in turn was used as the basis for a Bad_CRC video, which he edited in crowdsourcing images with Wing zero lines in real-world locations and commercials to plaster over Roberts’ technology track. The original “All Your Base” video was uploaded to Flash depository Newgrounds on February 16, 2001 and instantly drew into the collective consciousness with a ridiculous dialogue like “Somebody installed the bomb on us, “You have no chance of surviving, make your time” and, of course, “All your bases belong to us”, some of which were uttered by a sinister character named CATS. This one has garnered millions of views, a huge number in the days before YouTube.
Imaginary photos in the video it soon became a reality, as websites for San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, the Guardian, and Wired published stories about his popularity. When students at the University of North Carolina pirated in the weather reporting system of a local news station in 2004, “Your whole base belongs to us” is one of the expressions they used as digital graffiti. And now, 20 years later, it still appears from time to time thanks to people like billionaire dork Elon Musk and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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Although its cultural character may not be the same as it was two decades ago, “All Your Base” was an important forerunner of the meme-filled World Wide Web we know today. He has seen different creators come together and repeat themselves in a singular joke, doing everything from music to elaborate edited photos and animations to celebrating a few stupid lines from an obscure game of Genesis importance.
“All Your Base” is an indication of an era in which the Internet felt more like a wild frontier than a business owned by a few massive corporations. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to try to wrap my head around the fact that it’s been 20 years since I first saw this video.
Take out each “ZIG” !! For great justice.