The English language Sega Megadrive conversion of Toaplan‘s Zero Wing has gone down in history as one of the (unintentionally) funniest games of all time. The intro sequence (which was created for this version of the game and does not appear in the arcade original) features some of the most hilariously bad translations of all time, including the now iconic sentence “All your base are belong to us“, which became a meme in the early 2000s.

I’ve included screenshots of the majority of the intro sequence so you can savour the ‘Engrish’… 🙂

Game-wise, Zero Wing on the Megadrive/Genesis is fairly close to the arcade original, which you’d expect since Toaplan themselves developed and published this version of the game. One welcome difference is that you can change the difficulty level of the game in options – to easy, normal, or hard. Plus you can toggle rapid fire on or off, and can also choose to start a game with one to four lives (three is the default). These options are welcomed because the arcade original was arguably too difficult – especially the boss battles.

Graphics-wise, the Megadrive port is not as detailed or as colourful as its arcade parent, but overall it’s not too bad. It doesn’t seem to suffer too badly with sprite tearing, which is a common problem in these types of games on home consoles.

As side-scrolling bullet hell shooters go, Zero Wing is challenging and well-presented. I wouldn’t say that it’s among the best shooters on the Megadrive/Genesis, but it’s certainly not bad. Plus: those badly-translated cut scenes are definitely worth a giggle…

Zero Wing was first published for the Megadrive in 1991 in Japan and Europe only. It wasn’t given a North American release until much later, in 2020.

More: Zero Wing on Wikipedia