Was Zero Wing commemorated by Google?
If you visited Google on September 5, you may recall the above doodle, featuring a UFO beaming up one of Google’s ‘O’s. The search engine is renowned for its adapted logos, which often appear to mark a holiday or famous event. Usually, letting your cursor hover over the logo brings up an explanation.
This one was a little more mysterious, however, with no annotation offered. The only clue? A tweet from Google later in the day, which simply read:
“1.12.12 25.15.21.18 15 1.18.5 2.5.12.15.14.7 20.15 21.19”
The Telegraph’s Shane Richmond donned his deerstalker, and discovered that changing those numbers to their corresponding letters produced the following phrase:
“All Your O Are Belong To Us”
The meme-fluent amongst you should recognize that immediately – it’s Zero Wing! Google actually remembered Zero Wing! For those of you who are still bamboozled, Zero Wing was an obscure Japanese shoot-’em-up which Wikipedia states previously stated was released in arcades on September 5, 1989 (though this has now been changed to September 19).
The game shot to Internet fame a few years back, thanks to its endearing Engrish-filled introduction producing the kind of phrases you see in the shot below. September 5 was the game’s 20th anniversary, so it seems we have our Google doodle explanation!
[Via Telegraph]
