My Money's On Raphael

Our son was Massively into TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).  His older Uncle Chris liked the dark comic books of the early 80s that illustrated the pizza munching reptiles.  From the ages 2 to 6, our son got TMNT clothes, games, figures, toys every Christmas and Birthday.  I lost count of all the times I went to ToyRUs in Greenville to look for new action figures, the Christmas shopping seasons of 189 and 1990. 

Then, when video games were in their infancy in the early 90s, we got a Sega.  Sonic the Hedgehog was a rather benign and mom-friendly character, and there were a ton of sames back then, so we NEVER got into the Nintendo craze.  I did not enjoy Donkey Kong and its boring, blocky, choppy graphics.  We played Sega games in rich, graphically intense environments.  Then, when games migrated onto Pentium PCs, we played Doom, Duke Nuke'm, Redneck Rampage, Heretic (you could look UP and Down!), Quake, Doom II, Quake II, Mechwarrior II... so a Nintendo (original, Nintendo 64, or any other version) never was owned in my household.

So when I saw this image, it made me laugh.  An inept Italian plumber who originally fought a predictable gorilla in 2D,, versus a borderline psychotic, chronically depressed, massively sarcastic, incredibly violent mutant turtle martial artist armed with Psis.  What's Mario gonna do, jump on him?  Run away? Yep, my money is on Raphael.