I've never heard of that game being bundled with the NES, but it could have been a regional thing, I guess.
Either way, that wasn't why the first game was a huge seller; it's because "Turtlemania" was huge, we had nothing else, and like a lot of NES games, we were too young/starved for content to realize it wasn't actually very good. It was based on a thing we liked, so we bought it, and we played it, and we tricked ourselves into thinking it was anything but a hot mess, like those terrible Terminator and Simpsons games that came out around the same time.
I'm also a bit surprised to hear it was THE best-selling TMNT game, though. I would have bet on Turtles In Time, or maybe TMNT II: The Arcade game. ALL my friends had that one, but most didn't hang onto the first one, they either rented it and decided not to buy it, or gave it away once they got sick of it.
TMNT III was really great, I'm pissed it's not more fondly remembered. A case could be made for it being better than II or IV.
The SNES Tournament Fighters is better than SFII. "Tournament Fight"-me.
