Ethan Suplee & the Squirrel Cadaver-1994 Sega Game Gear Squirrel Commercial+How CPU Clock Speeds don't lineup between manufacturers

 Well....

This recently showed up on my FACEBOOK Reels Feed and suddenly, a wave of nostalgia came flooding down my cerebellum. 

......

Keep in mind, I wasn't born until December 1997 but a commercial like this is about to ignite a heavy amount of Nostalgia amongst many a SEGA Fan from the mid-90s.

What's going on here?

Well.... It's some fat 90s Teenager playing on his Gameboy at a park in late spring '94.

He feels bored out of his mind playing his copy of SUPER MARIO LAND 2 SIX GOLDEN COINS....

More like he wished his GAMEBOY should have had a TFT Active Matrix Color Display instead of that non-backlit STN Passive Matrix Display.

Suddenly, he notices something on the Ground.

What is it?

UGH!!!!! It's a dead squirrel.

Seeing as that Dead Squirrel obviously is under the effects of RIGOR MORTIS, the guy decides to take advantage of that by holding the squirrel by it's tail.

*WHACK!!!*

uhh.... That's one way of inducing an ACID TRIP but I think it may have something to do with the smell of putrefaction from the squirrel than hitting yourself bluntly on the head.

At least he's seeing... COLOR on your GAMEBOY?

"Woah..... Color......"

Since this was 1994 and it would be 4 years before the GAMEBOY COLOR showed up at retail in 1998,

Your only other method was to use an SNES and this cartridge here

This allowed certain games to have a slightly enhanced color pallete alongside some borders

But of course, SEGA didn't care.

They decided to rib on NINTENDO circa '94 and state that the only handheld you really need is a GAME GEAR:

All while showing a thin teenager to accentuate that.

?????

Why does this guy look like actor ZACHARY GORDON before he was born in 1998?

Anyway, the narrator also insinuates that the GAME GEAR's superiority is due to having games like 

SONIC 

and MORTAL KOMBAT.

And then........

"SEGA!!!!"

WOAH!!!!! 

Did that Squirrel Cadaver just..... RE-ANIMATE?

DAMMIT HERBERT WEST!!!!!

"I swear! I didn't use my REGENT on that SQUIRREL!

Go see my movie! You'll know that the regent does not work on 

organisms that have entered RIGOR MORTIS!!!"

Ok. I believe you. You're forgiven.

If you're wondering about why the GA and MA-17 logos are superimposed?

That was SEGA actually playing fair with CONTENT RATING SYSTEMS by starting their own AGE RATINGS SYSTEM.....

All because the original MORTAL KOMBAT & NIGHT TRAP pissed off the American Government in 1993.

SEGA's Videogame Rating Council would eventually be replaced with the North American standard ESRB system after it's enforcement in September 1994.

As usual, if you want to see the commercial in full, here's the YouTube Link for the commercial:

The fat Teenager you see in the commercial is none other than ETHAN SUPLEE.

About a year after this commercial was released, he found everlasting fame in KEVIN SMITH's 1995 film MALLRATS.

In that, he portrayed WILLAM, a guy who can't find that DAMN SAILBOAT on a MAGIC EYE poster due to his lack of depth perception.

"Will you shut up!!!! 

I'm trying my damnest to find that stupid Sailboat!"

SPOILER ALERT:

He eventually does find the sailboat...... albeit OFFSCREEN.

The SEGA GAME GEAR Commercial is one of the many ATTACK ADs that SEGA OF AMERICA made as they were trying to unseat NINTENDO and drive them out of the business because according to TOM KALINSKE, Withered Technology as insinuated by the LATE GUNPEI YOKOI does not guaranteed winning hardware.

So SEGA tried everything to show NINTENDO that you don't need a weak 65C02 CPU to have a great console

with them saying that a ROIDED UP Motorola 68000 is superior because BLAST PROCESSING.

I don't care what you still fiercely believe but the BLAST PROCESSING thing is a piece of CRAP and nothing short of a MARKeTING GIMMICK.

Because the MOTOROLA 68000, like the MOS 6502, was developed in the 1970s and was developed for the better part of the 1980s before it finally found use in computers like the Macintosh, Atari ST, and the Commodore Amiga.

Still want to challenge my Views?

Let's use screenshot as an example:

The 68000 is rated at 7mhz while the earlier 6502 can sometimes be set at the default of 1mhz.

Looks like the 68000 would be the winner... RIGHT?

WRONG!!!!!!!!!

Let's say you would downclock the 68000 so it's on the same ballpark as the 6502. 

You'd expect them to be equal, but no. Take a look at what's show below:

There's a rating known as MIPS which stands for 

MEGA INSTRUCTIONS PER SECOND.

It is a measurement to measure how much instructions a CPU can execute efficiently.

As seen in the screenshot above, a 1mhz 68000 has a pretty abysmal efficiency cycle to handle it's instructions when compared to a similarly clocked 6502.

But of course, the 68000 is meant to start at 6 or 7mhz by default so you'd expect the efficiency to be better. Right?

Well.... It is better but only by a minor margin.

Because the 68000's biggest competitor,(not counting x86 CPUS) was the WDC 65C02.

And those often had a starting 3mhz clock.

I've done my research when comparing the GENESIS vs the SNES and here are the results:

GENESIS: Motorola 68000 7.6MHz(1.3 MIPS)

&

SNES: Ricoh 5A22 3.58MHz(1.5 MIPS)

In essence, the SNES still beats the GENESIS due to it's higher MIPS rating..... by a minor margin according to the number past the decimal.

But I know people are gonna fiercely disagree with me and still say that the GENESIS is better because of it's 7.6MHz being the source of all that BLAST PROCESSING.....

The reason people would refuse to believe this is because:

WE ONLY CARE ABOUT RAW CPU CLOCKS AND NOT MIPS RATINGS! 

At least... that was the original mantra.

Nowadays, we don't really look at how high of a rating we demand in our CPUS.

It's all dependent on the core count, and at some point, L3 cache.

Take for example my MAVERICK FALCON's AMD Ryzen 9 9950x3D

It's rated at a 4.3GHz clock so that doesn't sound impressive when compared to it's lower clocked brethren like a Ryzen 5 9600x or a Ryzen 7 9800x3D.

But the real hero of the 9950x3D is it's L3 Cache.

The CPU in it's original Single CCD configuration has an L3 Cache of 128MB when compared to the lower number used in other CPUS which go no higher than 32MB.

And even the Ryzen 7 9800x3D, the best CPU for gaming, has an L3 Cache of 96MB which is lower than my 9950x3D's 128MB L3 Cache.

And the recently released 9950x3D2 CPU released back in April 2026 absolutely TRUMPS both my CPU and the Ryzen 7 Variant with it's insane 192MB L3 Cache which is enough to be in THREADRIPPER or EPYC territory though both those levels of CPUS still beat the 9950X3D2 by several margins.

Well.... the BLAST PROCESSING crap worked for a bit with the GENESIS(MEGA DRIVE in Japan and UK) due to SONIC but surprisingly, the Game Boy still managed to beat the GAME GEAR...

As well as both the ATARI LYNX

and the NEC TURBOEXPRESS

Eventually,

SEGA exited the hardware business due to mishandling of the SATURN by KALINSKE and a failure by BERNIE STOLAR to take into account the rising success of SONY's PlayStation Consoles.

So now SEGA is a Software company that makes games for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and for PC GAMERS out there.

But one good thing did happen to ETHAN SUPLEE.

After finally finding the Sailboat,

He lost weight.

Yes, I did mention that I was gonna be booked for JUNE due to FIFA and my job working at the STAFF KITCHEN at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver.....

But I just couldn't resist making a BLOGPOST about one of my favorite Commercials from the bygone years of SEGA fighting with NINTENDO.