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MEAN MEME MACHINE
Dear Retro Gamer, I’ve been quite annoyed recently and it’s all because of Zero Wing. Well, not Zero Wing but the people talking about it. The arcade version has recently been released on PC and I’m fed up of people moaning that it doesn’t have the, “All your base,” quote, when it was never in that version in the first place. It’s not that I don’t find it funny, I just get annoyed that a genuinely decent game is completely overshadowed by one meme that has been beaten half to death over the last 20 years.
I get why that would happen to rubbish games like the Zelda CD-i games, but I can’t think of any other games that are actually worthwhile that get this treatment. Am I missing something, or is Zero Wing really alone in this regard?
John Donovan
That’s a good question, John. It’s not common, but it does happen – for example, the Dead Or Alive games have sometimes been at the forefront of the fighting genre, but to some people they’ll always just be the fighting games with jiggle physics. Genji: Days Of The Blade isn’t dreadful, but it will forever be the game that spawned the giant enemy crab meme, and just about all discussion of Earthbound outside of fan circles tends to concern the creepy final boss fight against Giygas.