TV Time: Is This the Greatest Video Game Commercial of All Time?

Americans tend to have skewed ideas about Japanese television. They’ve seen shows like Iron Chef and Ninja Warrior and Speed Racer and clips of crazy stuff on YouTube, and think all Japanese shows are cool and nutty and fun like that. In reality, Japanese TV sucks. It’s mostly shows where a bunch of people sit around and talk about the news and comment on bits of video while text annihilates the screen, like if the people on Mystery Science Theater 3000 weren’t funny, or if Regis and Kathie Lee also had like 15 other people sitting there.

But the commercials. Oh, the commercials. They’re fast, weird, and generally nonsensical. Mr. Sparkle has nothing on real Japanese ads. I like a lot of them, but there’s one in particular that has always stayed with me.

The history of video games has had a lot of great ads. Remember the Dr. Mario ad featuring the witch doctor? If you’re my age (18) you probably still say “And then he shrunk my head” whenever you hear that song.

However, like in many areas of life, the Japanese have us beat on this one:

The Japanese be crazy yo.

Meet ChuChu Rocket!, a game for the Sega Dreamcast released in 1999. If you don’t know, “Chu chu” is the sound a mouse makes in Japanese. I’ve never played this game, but the commercial is really all I need. I like the tune. I like the guy’s voice. I like the animation. And most of all, I like the lyrics:

ChuChu Rocket,

Help the mice

ChuChu Rocket,

The cat is scary

ChuChu Rocket,

The rocket is cool!

Zuwawawawaa!

The story of the commercial seems to be this: a vicious cat eats some mice. The mice then board a spaceship somehow, and kill the cat as they explode out the top of its head. Dramatic, funny, beautiful, all in only 15 seconds.

I would buy one million copies of this game if I were a millionaire in 1999. Here it is again, in case that first video wasn’t enough for you:

Thank you to the creators of this commercial. And thank you to the Internet for giving us the ability to watch it over and over and over and over and over again.