Nothing overly exciting for me. My indoctrination into video-games started with Legend of Zelda, for the Nintendo. (at least, back then everyone just called it the Nintendo. When SNES was invented, we called them Normal Nintendo and Super Nintendo. Didn't even know Entertainment System was technically at the end of the name until game cube years.) I watched my father and my uncle play for hours when I was, like, three or four. Eventually they let me play Super Mario World, which led into actually getting to play Zelda.
For the first few years of gaming, my parents would only let me play for about an hour per day, and if I became too frustrated with the game (read: screaming and kicking and calling Mario names), they would take it away for days at a time... which was torture for a four/five year old.
Eventually, SNES and SEGA Genesis happened (we simply called it SEGA). My parents bought me a SNES and my friend had a SEGA and a SNES, so I ended up playing a lot of video games. The NES had not yet gone out of style, since the idea of "console generations" had yet to occur, and I rented all kinds of games. Still only really loved the classics, however: Mario, Zelda, Super Metriod and Donkey Kong Country for Nintendo, and I only really ever liked the Sonic franchise for SEGA. Ever.
Nintendo 64 hit the gaming world like a comet (despite SEGA CD and SEGA SATURN both existing first; what can I say, all SEGA really had going for it was Sonic) and I still remember the first time I got to play it: rented the machine from Blockbuster for like $40.00, and it only came with Mario 64, that crappy flying game no one liked (not Superman 64) and one controller. Played the shit out of that game, and got to Second Bowser in one night.
A few years later, my parents finally bought me one of my own for Christmas, and so began the golden years of my gaming experience. Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Golden Eye (to eventually be replaced by the much better Perfect Dark. Same game with better levels, better graphics, kick ass multi-player bots and freaking bloodstains on the walls? blew my 14 year old mind), and Super Smash Brothers dominated in this age of my life.
When GameCube came around, I was also into a lot of PC games, primarily Starcraft. Didn't really play Starcraft online, because it sucked to lose every single time I played. Diablo 2 was also a hit for me, and I would come back to it many times over the next fer years. Never was interested in Warcraft or it's billion sequels/expansions, and never even heard of Everquest/Ultima online at the time.
As for the GameCube itself, I played a lot of Metroid: Awesomesause. Because it was Awesomesause. I was generally meh'ed by Wind Waker. Super Smash Bro's Melee was the best thing to happen to that system, in my humble opinion. God I was psyched to play better Super Smash Bro's, and the game did not disappoint. Around this time I also got my first PlayStation, and though it was graphically sub-par to the PS2... I actually had one. So points for that. Not much to tell about there, except for GTA2. FFVII would be enjoyed by me a long time later, and would be my first JRPG (like, Xbox 360 wasn't new any more kind of later).
The original XBox had a lot of games I enjoyed moderately, and unfortunately, was also the only time I ever pirated games; before you judge me, let me explain myself:
My uncle was a professional pirate. Originally, his focus was on VHS, because it was so easy to do. Because of this, I grew up with very little understanding of the illegal impact of Software piracy; it was just something I was used to, and didn't feel wrong the same way shoplifting the same movie from a retailer would have. When Napster came about, everyone and their dog downloaded music illegally with little to no moral backlash, and this did not help the situation for me, who simply considered Napster to be a convenient way to find music.
Anyway, it was my Uncle who bought me my XBox, complete with it's very own illegal modifications which allowed it to copy the data from a game disk, save it to the hard drive, and convert it to a playable format. It also came with ROMS of the NES, SNES, and SEGA: GENESIS, and a nearly complete library for each. My 16 year old, piracy hardwired brain thought this was the bomb, and indeed, it was. I could rent a game, save it to my hard drive, and suddenly, I never had to purchase a game again. It was years before I realized, fully, that piracy was literally theft, and I havn't pirated any software for a really long time as a result of that understanding. God I felt dirty when I realized what we were doing.
So... yeah. There is my story of how I became addicted to video games... strangely, almost in it's entirety.
TL;DR
Zelda
