When a piece of pop culture produces a meme, it's difficult to imagine that people would check it out if they took the meme away. Heck, already so few people actually saw Morbius, so can you imagine how bleak the response to 2022's flop would've been if they cut out the part where Morbius says "It's Morbin Time" and totally Morbs all over the bad guys?

Well, Bitwave Games is running this gambit by rereleasing the classic Zero Wing, which scholars will note is none other than the video game that spawned one of the mothers of all memes, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us," without the beloved "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" scene.

Coincidentally, this also just so happens to fall on the 22-year anniversary of the classic meme — perhaps dumping further fuel onto the fire surrounding the decision to exclude it.

22 years ago this week, one of the Internet's earliest in-jokes was born in the form of an iconic mistranslation: "All your base are belong to us." Read our 2021 retrospective on one of the web's first great memes.https://t.co/MfKwofO1ft

— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) February 15, 2023

Of note, Bitwave is porting the 1989 arcade version of Zero Wing to Steam. This means it is not the Sega Genesis port with the wonky translation that turned Zero Wing into one of early gaming's most iconic titles.

According to Kotaku, the Steam page for the game leaned into the game's meme history, but it seems that all your reference to old meme are belong to deleted.

In case you are a "meme fan" who "loves classic memes," you may be interested in knowing that the version of Zero Wing that hit Steam today for $8 doesn't appear to include the Mega Drive version, despite mentioning the "all your base" stuff twice on the page.

— Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann) February 15, 2023

That being said, the port is receiving positive reviews on Steam so far, even if some reviewers are a little disappointed that the port is meme-free. Additionally, Bitwave has promised that "All Your Base" will be added to their port in the coming weeks, so if you want to play a tough-as-nails arcade shooter and enjoy the moment that became a part of internet history, there's hope.