This was not a malicious virus, but a symptom of a sloppy "crack" or intro insertion. The file became a meme within the community. For new emulation users, encountering "Squirrels" text was often a rite of passage—a signal that they had downloaded a "dirty" ROM from an unverified source. It served as a digital watermark of piracy, branding the player's save file with the stamp of the scene group that leaked it.