Zero Wing

Zero Wing looks at first glance like a solid but unremarkable horizontal shooter from the legendary Toaplan studio, masters of the shmup genre in the late '80s and early '90s. Originally a 1989 arcade game, it arrived on the Mega Drive in 1992 with an added intro — and it was that very intro that turned an ordinary shooter into an immortal internet legend.

The game itself offers the best of the Toaplan school: collecting weapon upgrades, helper „options“, swarms of enemies and a polished sense of ship movement. It's not the hardest or most famous Toaplan title, but it's honestly fun and today nicely represents the era when shmups were among the pillars of a console's lineup.

Zero Wing earned its fame above all through its grotesquely translated European intro — the line „All your base are belong to us“ became one of the first global internet memes at the turn of the millennium, circulating as remixes, images and videos. For the retro community, Zero Wing is doubly dear: partly as a piece of shmup history, partly as an artifact of early internet humor.