[ad_1]
As the internet began to crystallize into its modern form – one that now arguably sustains society as we know it – its anthropology of common language and references matured at an odd rate. But between the simple initialisms that emerged by the 90s (ROFL!) And the ecosystem of the modern world of easily shared multimedia, a patchwork connection of users and sites had to figure out how to establish a shared reference base.
In a way, the Internet as we know it really started on February 16, 2001, 20 years ago today, when a three word phrase exploded: “All Your Base”.
On that day, a robotic voice video clip was uploaded to Newgrounds.com, one of the internet’s first dumps for Flash media content, and has become one of the most beloved internet videos of the 21st century. Although Flash support has since been phased out throughout the web browsing ecosystem, Newgrounds continues to host the original video in a secure Flash emulator, if you want to see it as originally built instead of browsing. dozens of YouTube rips.
In an online world where users were previously drawn to the hamster dance, how on earth did this nonsense become one of the internet’s first genuine memes?
REMOVE EACH “ZIG” !!
Wing zeroThe opening sequence was shared widely on the Internet as a GIF small enough to fit on a 3.5 inch floppy disk. KnowYourMeme
One possible reason is that the video “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” appealed to the most sophisticated early users of the Internet because it came from an unpopular video game from the 90s. Wing zero launched on the Sega Genesis in 1992 as a proficient “shmup” comparable to arcade classics like Galaga and Type R, but it has flown under the radar in an American market more obsessed with series like Sonic and Madden. In the late 90s, however, PC video game emulation changed everything. In the first post-BBS internet, the underrated 8-bit and 16-bit games changed hands at a breakneck pace thanks to small file sizes and 56K modems – and if you were an early internet user, you were probably a target audience for activities such as emulating a Sega Genesis on a PC with a Pentium II.
It was the first step in exposing the world to Wing zeroinadvertently hilarious text translated from Japanese to English by an apparent amateur. Classic Japanese games are littered with crappy translations, and even successful publishers like Nintendo are guilty of letting bad phrases creep into otherwise classic games. But Wing zero deeply saddened other examples of wacky translation errors thanks to its dramatic opening sequence pitting the credits “CAPTAIN” against a half-robot, half-demon creature in a robe named “CATS”.
His madness circulated on the internet at first in the form of a tiny GIF, with each of his silly phrases (“How are you gentlemen !!”, “Someone put the bomb on us”) weighing heavily in terms of clauses. oddly placed and missing punctuation. Early internet communities made fun of the footage by creating and sharing gag images that had silly text inserted in different ways. But it wasn’t until the February 2001 video, uploaded by a user who went through “Bad-CRC,” that the meme’s appeal really started to explode. The video features the original Sega Genesis graphics, coupled with monotonous, machine-generated speech reading out every sentence. “You are on the way to destruction” in that voice is deliciously silly.
-
Much of the fun of the original video comes from its edited footage, where the craziness of the poorly translated game intro collides with pop culture. The famous photo of Bill Gates had become very popular at the very beginning of the Internet age, for example.
-
Who doesn’t love a BSOD that tells you who owns your entire base now?
-
Lots of Windows errors in the 2001 video.
-
Star Wars movie reissues from the late ’90s meant cereal ties, perfect for All Your Base memorization.
-
Smoking kills. For great justice.
-
I would like to buy a zig.
-
Meme of the year.
-
Definitely, a twist on the idea that we were all on the path to destruction.
-
Someone made the chicken for us.
-
Main activation of conspiracy theory.
After this 30-second sequence ends (admittedly removing some of the original, silly text), the background music for the video turns into a punchy techno track. The original 16-bit visuals go black and a low-res image of planet Earth consumes the screen for some reason. Then everything explodes. “ALL YOUR BASE, YOUR BASE, ALL YOUR BASE, ALL OF YOUR BASE BELONG TO US,” yells the robotic voice, as if it had become a member of The Prodigy, as the Flash animation turns into a Photoshop frenzy of real images. newly emblazoned Wing zerovarious poorly translated sentences. These remixed images are certainly from an era; George W. Bush, Al Gore, and OJ Simpson appear in a few, as does a Windows “blue screen of death” rewritten to contain mostly in-game text.
WE GET A SIGNAL.
The video credits include around 20 additional usernames that smack of the year 2001, including DrMeithos, The Yellow Yell, and Generic Superhero, giving credit to the “shitposting” community that played with the “All Your Base” phenomenon. “in small circles online and generated so many silly images for this video to tap into. Additionally, the entire audio clip in the video – the robotic voice intro, perfectly sequenced with the game Genesis, then its transformation into punchy techno – was performed by someone else, a band of anonymous internet users who visited The Laziest Men on Mars.
Bad-CRC can be remembered as the video’s original uploader, but The Laziest Men on Mars helped establish a significant trend in online meme sharing: an addiction to crowdsourcing and remixing. The meme wouldn’t exist without Wing zeroThe original content of the game, but dozens of people pulled and twisted this original vision like so much pulling on the Internet, to the point that neither the creators of the game nor any contributor to the meme could take credit for the phenomenon.
It was only when Flash video appeared, synthesizing the furious efforts of a community spread across forums and file exchange services, that the rest of the internet world was able to find and digest this panoply of WTF. Newgrounds was one of many dumping grounds for Flash animations, which made it easier for friends to share links not only to videos, but also free online games, usually in a way that school computer labs wouldn’t. did not necessarily block, which caused children to devour and share their favorites when teachers weren’t looking closely at student screens. And in the case of “All Your Base,” its general lack of vulgarity made it easier to reach children without angering parents. It wasn’t like the early ’90s congressional hearings against violent and sexual video games. It was just … weird.
And, it’s okay, it still is. Yes, this video’s 20th anniversary will probably make you feel like dirt as old as it gets, but that doesn’t mean the video itself has aged badly. There is still something timeless about the madness and innocence of so many internet pioneers who send in a poorly translated game. And in an age when widely circulated memes so often fall into cruelty or shock value, it’s nice to look back at a time when memes were just plain stupid enough.
[ad_2]
Source link