I’m actually a member of SomethingAwful and I was ‘there’ when that screenshot went live. It must have been around 2003 or perhaps even earlier. Sadly, even the SA archives do not yield the snowclone’s backstory (i spent almost an hour browsing it!) although I did find this screenshot via Google images: http://dessent.net/tmp/doodz.gif

I have no idea if this image is genuine or not but the premise of the screenshot is definitely the closest I have found to the origin.

Here’s the full story as I remember it.

A terran (human-based race) is dueling a zerg (alien-insectoid-like race) in a 1v1 game on the map (a battleground), made for up-to-8 players (i.e. it’s very large, with 6 more spots where a player could potentially start off).

The terran spends the entire game building up a fleet of battlecruisers (slow, ponderous but powerful spaceships).

Mr terran then goes hunting for the zerg – remember how slow these battlecruisers are?

As the terran cruises each corner of the map looking for his opponent, he utters the infamous line:

“Dude, where are you”

To which the zerg player replies:

“I’m in ur base, killing your d00ds”

As you can see in the screenshot, the brown zerg units have the yellow terran base up in flames.