So, yes. Back in the early 1990s Sega had this downright morbid obsession with featuring dead animals in their advertising. In 1992, UK viewers were alerted to the launch of Sonic 2 with the image of Steven O'Donnell attempting to revive a moribund hedgehog, in a disturbing spot that also functioned as a backhanded PSA for an existing hedgehog charity. In the US, Sega plugged the Game Gear, their rival to Nintendo's better-known Game Boy, with a spot suggesting an alternative usage for a squirrel with rigor mortis. If you thought that licking toads was a good way to get high, that's nothing compared to the psychedelic effects of bludgeoning your cranium with roadkill. This bizarre scenario was topped off by having the re-animated squirrel scream out the company's then-signature battle cry of "SEGA!"
I'm still largely perplexed by that Steven O'Donnell hedgehog ad, but in this case it's not too hard to discern the visual metaphors. The creepy zombie squirrel is an unnervingly offbeat touch, but not to the point of concealing the mean-spirited intentions behind this ad, which formed part of a wider campaign dedicated less to extolling the virtues of the Game Gear than in rubbishing consumers who were satisfied with the Game Boy and its deficiencies in the colour department. The Game Gear's major selling point was that it was more technologically advanced than Nintendo's console, since it supported colour, and colour, so Sega would have us believe, is what all the smart kids respond to. There was a hidden cost to all this colour, however, as the Game Gear boasted dismal battery life compared to the more energy-efficient Game Boy, which was clearly the smarter choice from an economical perspective. Consumers were likewise turned off by the Game Gear's weaker selection of titles and the bulkier size (next to the comparatively sleeker, lighter Game Boy - yes, exactly). As such, the Game Gear never came close to toppling the Game Boy's reign, no matter how many dead decaying animals it threw in your direction - and no, it didn't stop with the squirrel. In another spot the cry of "SEGA!" came from a fly getting its body fried in a bug zapper, the green flickering light of which doubled as entertainment for a mentally-challenged family whose vacuous fascination was likened to that of a Game Boy devotee. The campaign was viciously unsubtle on the whole "monochrome is for morons" narrative, to a degree that frankly wouldn't fly by modern-day standards, but it was also visually repellent in a manner plainly designed to represent the Nintendo-playing experience as utterly squalid.
Hence the emphasis on the dead squirrel, and the flies - they signify grime, decay and degradation. Above all, they're indication of Nintendo as an entertainment dead-end. And they're accordingly unpleasant to look at. The hedgehog in the aforementioned Mega Drive ad looked sufficiently unresponsive, but was blatantly not a real hedgehog. The squirrel here, though, appears to be a genuine ex-squirrel, fresh (or not so fresh) from a date with the taxidermist. The Nintendo-playing sciurine abuser, meanwhile, is played by actor Ethan Suplee, shortly before he launched his movie career with a role in Kevin Smith's 1995 film Mallrats. Here, he's another derogatory representation of the Nintendo-playing crowd, with Sega clearly going for the fat = stupid shorthand that was still very acceptable in the 1990s (it's probably not a coincidence that the Game Gear player has a significantly slimmer body shape). Tellingly, he thinks nothing of lifting a dead animal off the litter-strewn ground (or even positioning himself in such a flagrantly unsanitary venue in the first place) and toying with it, which I'm sure was perceived as the perfect metaphor, in Sega's world, for what Game Boy players were doing on a regular basis.
The squirrel ultimately voices its objections to its mistreatment at the hands of Suplee by screaming out in solidarity with the competition; the name "Sega" represents a flicker of life amid the physical and mental inertia, the means of rising above the putrefaction. Just keep in mind that that ascension requires 6x AA batteries, and even that won't take you particularly far.
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