QDB: Quote #544203 – i worked on a project once where somebody named variables defined in various places explicity so on one line of code, it showed up as:
function_name($all, $urBase, $rBelong, $toUs);
closest i’ve ever come to manslaughter
(Via Bash.org)
This cracks me up which is usually what happens when "All your base" is used. But I never knew where the phrase came from. Enter Wikipedia and its vast repository of serious sounding trivia.
All Your Base are Belong to Us
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.
I was playing the Pop
I was playing the Pop Culture version of Trivial Pursuit this weekend (and losing magnificently, by the way. I suck at that one.). One of the questions was "What words were displayed after your last base was destroyed in the 80s video game Missle Command? Since I had no earthly idea, I said "All your base are belong to us" and was looked at rather oddly. Of course, I had a bit of payback later in the game when the question came up "What oddly-translated sentence from Zero Wing has become a cult catchphrase?" Sadly, this one wasn’t posed to me. Ah well.
At any rate, I have decided that "All your base are belong to us" is the Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit version of the Roberto Clemente Rule.
I wonder how long a post on I wonder how long a post on Wikipedia would last if I wrote about the Roberto Clemente rule? Maybe we would find out that it is a popularly accepted theory but no one has ever bothered to write it down before.