Science Officially Determines Who The Best Ninja Turtle Is

... Donatello's long, mighty pole can hit people in other states.

If Donatello stretched his arm a little more, he'd bump himself on the back of the head.

Unfortunately, such endowment may come in handy during special occasions, but it simply isn't practical in everyday life. When we threw each of the four Turtles into a hellish sewer infested with killer robots (aka the game's first fucking level), Donatello didn't do so well:

What Cracked writers look like trying to have sex.

He clearly has the "teenage," "mutant," and "turtle" parts down. But by this game's standards, I could grab a fallen tree branch after a thunderstorm and just kind swing it around in the air while making "whoosh" noises with my mouth and be qualified to call myself a ninja.

Results:

Leonardo: Cleared the sewer in 00:42 seconds

Michelangelo: 00:43

Raphael: 00:51

Donatello: Died pathetically at 01:27

Winner: Leonardo

We couldn't even get past the first stage (of two), because screw this game. Enemies pop up right on top of you, giving you zero time to react, and it's hard to tell whether you've actually killed something or it just wandered off to do something less shitty.

"Let's go do literally anything else."

Results:

The four Turtles are identical. However, since all four have red bandanas on the front of the game, we've concluded that this is a reality in which Raphael cloned himself and murdered his brothers.

Winner: Raphael

Or at least, that's as far as we got, because NES games are hard as hell, y'all.

Results:

None of the Turtles managed to beat the first boss, a rhinoceros who found Amelia Earhart's hat ...

"Feel free to continue giggling like a Japanese schoolgirl while we get pounded over here, April."

... but Leonardo came the closest, so we're giving him this one.

Winner: Leonardo

Some of those photos are, frankly, quite shocking. Observe this documentary evidence of Leonardo mating with what could be the boys' grandmother as Donatello looks away in horror:

"Oops!" indeed.

And now take a look at this photo, which seems to show Leonardo enacting a 9/11-style terrorist attack on the Statue of Liberty with the Turtle Blimp:

WAKE UP.

Results:

Kudos to Donatello for being the only Turtle to express any sort of moral regret while his brother jackhammered that defenseless turtle who clearly has never had a single ninja lesson.

Winner: Donatello

This thing is so incredibly loud that even today, people who played it as children still dive behind couches in response to sudden noises. There's even tin-can quality voice clips that play as you mash the buttons:

If you listen, you can hear the despondent tone in the Turtles' voice.

You can actually choose a Turtle this time, so we played with each one until they died (which didn't take long). We think? It's kind of hard to tell.

Remember that episode where the Turtles were replaced by grotesque marionettes?

Results:

Raphael: Survived for 00:38 seconds

Donatello: 00:25

Michelangelo: 00:22

Leonardo: 00:15

Winner: Raphael

Winner: Michelangelo

Results:

In the scene wherein Donatello makes a pizza for the group, if you look closely, you'll notice that Leonardo grabs two slices while Raphael and Michelangelo each grab one. As established, it is an indisputable fact that more pizza = better Turtle.

Leo was found hanged with nunchaku around his neck the next day.

Winner: Leonardo

But that serious tone is where the good ends, because this was made by someone who used their butt to control their PC. Which is our way of saying that the controls are a little obtuse.

This game was so made for butts that there's an anus right there.

Results:

Needless to say, none of the Turtles lasted long. That's especially true of Raphael, who bizarrely holds his sai backwards and pokes people with the handle. Did the only guy in the office who knew how knives worked take a week off or something?

At least that's in-character for this green imbecile.

Michelangelo: Survived for 01:33

Leonard: 01:18

Donatello: 00:48

Raphael: 00:38

Winner: Michelangelo

The most impressive feature in this game is that you can now tell which enemies will drop pizza upon death, because they actually carry pizza boxes above them. Which means either they're extremely mentally stunted, thinking that pizza is a good weapon choice ... or you're randomly murdering innocent pizza delivery guys.

That, or Raphael just killed a random deliveryman.

Results:

Donatello: 5 slices of pizza eaten

Raphael: 3

Leonardo: 2

Michelangelo: 0

The pizza gods work in mysterious ways.

Winner: Donatello

It is worth noting that, despite the title, Shredder does not appear in this game. We assume this oversight will be corrected in a DLC release coming any day now. And sure, all the Turtles use the same crappy katana, but since the game isn't a hot branding iron to your brain, we'll forgive it.

Drunkenly Swing A Sword At Anything That Moves: The Handheld Game

Results:

Raphael: Survived for 01:24

Donatello: 01:17

Michelangelo: 00:60

Leonardo: 00:54

Winner: Raphael

Did we mention NES games are hard as hell? NES games are hard as hell. We ran across one freaking pizza in three levels (Michelangelo got it, predictably). The game helpfully tells you your score after you've been murdered by the quintillion enemies onscreen at all times, so we'll judge the Turtles based on that. If there's one thing old-school video games refused to give up, it's a point system.

Results:

Leonardo: 95,200 points

Donatello: 80,100

Michelangelo: 37,200

Raphael: 36,600

Master Splinter makes no attempt to hide his disappointment in Craphael.

Winner: Leonardo

Whether the people who made the game knew what basketball even was is debatable, though. The villains only play defense, so you can take as many shots as you like. The scoring also seems arbitrary, as you can occasionally get as many as eight points for a single throw. Also, the players teleport from spot to spot, which some might consider a limitation of the system not being able to show movement, but which we prefer to think of as the rules of a futuristic version called "awesomeball."

"Of course we know what busketbell is!"

Results:

Since you can't choose a Turtle for this one, we debated on how to determine which Turtle is the best at basketball, until we stumbled across this tweet:

NBA TV
Raphael, you sly son of a bitch.

Winner: Raphael

So whichever Turtle happens to do this the most wins.

Results:

Everyone made seven throws, except Michelangelo, who made nine. He actually managed to defeat Shredder and somehow die at the same time. This is some Drunken Master shit right here.

Above: a simultaneous finish.

Winner: Technically Shredder, but we'll give this one to Michelangelo

Just fucking with you. We weren't able to get our hands on this one in time for the article, so we installed a Ninja Turtles watch face on a smartwatch. You can see the actual (terrible) game in action here.

Results:

We decided to give the win to Leonardo, since this monstrosity is shaped like him.

Pintrest, eBay
Also because it's unwise to piss off someone wearing a bomb vest.

Winner: Leonardo

It's clear by now what Shredder's true motivation is: He just loves New York too damn much, and wants to protect it from those reckless turtles (especially Leonardo with his Bin Laden aspirations). To show our solidarity with Shredder's noble mission, we played terribly and died often.

Results:

The bastard Raphael made it further than the other turtles, all the way to the Level 4 miniboss, Leatherhead, who for some reason has turned pink.

All those detergents they dump in the sewers have done a number on New York's wildlife.

Winner: the bastard Raphael

... except Michelangelo, who was out getting pizza at the time. Seriously. Once again, Mikey's pizza addiction gives him an edge over his brothers.

"Fuck 'em, more pizza for me."

You unlock each Turtle after rescuing them -- which we only know from looking at YouTube, because we didn't make it that far, so we only got to play as Michelangelo. Look man, we're scientists, not professional gamers.

Results:

Michelangelo: Survived for 18:43

Leonardo: 00:00

Donatello: 00:00

Raphael: 00:00

Wow! Landslide victory!

Winner: Michelangelo

Results:

We organized computer vs. computer tournaments in both versions. Here's the exciting AI action:

This is what Skynet looks at all day.

If you don't feel like watching 13 minutes of pixelated turtle-tussling, we'll spoil it for you: Donatello won both tournaments, mercilessly beating up his brothers to unconsciousness even though they're presumably just supposed to be training. That's one cold motherfucker. Something tells us he's gonna win this article. Even if he doesn't, he's definitely won our hearts.

You cross Donatello, you get crossed.

Winner: Donatello

The deafeningly loud music is back, as are the random voice clips -- only now the clips freeze the game every time they play (which is constantly). So while our times on this game are quite a bit longer than on the other LCD games, it's mostly because there was a two-second voice clip playing every, well, two seconds.

"How many sound clips do you want?"
"Just fuck me up."

Also, the enemies attack you from strange, non-Euclidean angles where it's not clear how to hit them back, as if the game was designed by H.P. Lovecraft's nightmares. On top of that, Dimension X Assault uses four AA batteries, while the Konami games used only two. Straight bullshit.

Pictured: an alternate gameplay method.

Results:

Raphael: Survived for 02:40

Leonardo: 01:29

Donatello: 01:20

Michelangelo: 00:40

Winner: Raphael

Final Results

Raphael: 6

Leonardo: 5

Michelangelo: 4

Donatello: 3

No. Wait, no. That ... that can't be right. Obviously, our whole approach was wrong. We shouldn't have stopped with the games based on the original cartoon. We should have played every TMNT game ever. All 89 of them (we counted). OK, give us a few minutes.

Five months later ...

Final Final Results

Raphael: 84

Michelangelo: 6

Leonardo: 2

Donatello: -3

ALL HAIL RAPHAEL, THE GREATEST NINJA TURTLE! We knew it all along.

For more from Ashe, check out Weird Shit Blog. Maxwell Yezpitelok lives in Chile, and also on Twitter. Shout-out to The Technodrome Forum!

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