The Alliance has signed a treaty with the pirates, but, soon enough, they were betrayed! These clips from a famous game cutscene illustrate the story:

The betrayed hero:

A first-hand view of the betrayal (notice the explosions):

And, finally, the evil villain pirate:

Identify the game and the reason for its popularity (identify all the pics, if you so wish)

Answered by: devadutta, udupendra, bs and Atul Mathew.

Answer:

These are cutscenes from the game Zero Wing, a Japanese sidescroller. The english translation of this game had some amusing misspellings, including one famous line where the villain (CATS) says “All your base are belong to us” to the captain, and this caught on to become a huge craze on the internet.