I’m playing miniature golf in the middle of nowhere when I see it carved into a wooden post at the third hole: “All Your Base Belong to Us.” And I’m shocked — not because some kid had vandalized this sacred public place or because this etching is a thinly coded vulgarity (the cruder the better, I say). No, I am astonished because an on-line cult joke has managed to pop up at this random mini-golf course in this nondescript place. That day I actually got the joke — and you will, too, if you check out www.allyourbase.net.

The story behind “All Your Base Belong to Us” starts in the early ’90s, when a Japanese video-game company attempted to translate one of its games into English and failed miserably. Featuring a dialogue between a spaceship captain and his crew, the game’s introduction is littered with grammatical errors. When an explosion first hits the craft, the captain yells, “What happen?”; a mechanic responds, “Somebody set up us the bomb”; a couple of seconds later, the ship’s attackers demand, “All your base are belong to us.” Someone put these misinterpretations on the ’Net, and www.allyourbase.net is proof that people just can’t get enough.

Allyourbase.net (www.allyourbase.net) is one of many Web sites paying homage to this craze. If you sift through even a third of the site, you’ll see how popular this video game has become on-line. Techies everywhere have used their Photoshop skills to honor Zig, Cats, and the other video characters in modern pop-culture renditions: Vanna White spells All your base on a photo of Wheel of Fortune, Cats (the ship’s attacker) appears on the cover of Time, and there’s even a billboard warning from God that “All your base are belong to us.” Also, the Web site offers many downloads, including a music video that sets the original video game and its poor translation to really bad techno, as well as an MP3 of a very disenchanted girlfriend calling Loveline and complaining about how this bad translation has damaged her relationship.

It’s fair to say that ’Net surfers love this video game for one of the same reasons Mahir “I kiss you!!!” Cagri (http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/primall/mahir/081199.html), was so popular a year and a half ago: people like to laugh at choppy English. So does that make this craze very un-PC? Or just in good fun? That’s for you to decide the next time you are in the supermarket, Times Square, or even prison, and you see “All Your Base Are Belong to Us.” But don’t say I didn’t warn you.