“All your base are belong to us”

Zero Wing is a 1989 side-scrolling shoot ’em up arcade game developed by Toaplan and published by Taito. In the Mega Drive version, to expand on the game’s plot, Toaplan added an introductory cut scene to the game. This introductory scene was translated by Sega of Europe, resulting in dialogue such as “Somebody set up us the bomb”, “All your base are belong to us”, and “You have no chance to survive make your time”.

Pros:

All in all this game is pretty straight forward for being a side-scrolling shoot ’em up. Move around, blow up various bad guys, get upgrades, etc. An additional, fun little feature is that you can grab enemies with your “zig” and throw them at other enemies, which is pretty fun, especially when you grab one that is just a bit too oversized to make sense. One of my favorite parts of the game is the music, which I am sure you have noticed is a big plus for me. The theme “Natols” is my favorite, specifically.

Cons:

One major problem with this game though is the fact that upgrades are essential to success (trust me, stick with the green ones only), and when you die, you lose all of them. So if you are far enough along in the game and are facing some serious enemies, it’s really hard to recover from a death. You just have pray for as many green upgrades ASAP and hope you don’t get killed before you can start doing some real damage again, or you will just find yourself dying over and over again in the same spot until you run out of continues and you have to start from the beginning of the game. Ugh.