I was just thinking about what got me into different things like anime/ games/ comics etc and thought it would be fun to see what brought others into the fold. For me it was
Anime: Princess Mononoke, saw it when I was 10? And it completely floored me with the art style, story, and lore. Still my favorite anime movie to this day.
Video games: Sega Genesis/ sonic the hedgehog and altered beast with my older brother were great times when I was little and got me into gaming.
Comics: Spider-Man and X-men on fox kids in the 90s and Spawn in 97. My first official comic/ graphic novel was Wolverine: Origin
Anime: Kiki's Delivery Service was my first introduction to anime proper. But Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was the one that really hooked me in and never let me go again.
Video games: Super Mario Brothers on the Gameboy Color. Still remember that Christmas fondly.
I think the game boy color was a massive game changer for mobile gaming at the time, less bulky and great games
Sci-Fi (Early): Star Trek: The Next Generation
Video Games (Early): Mega Man 2
Computer Games (Tactical Shooters): Rainbow Six
Computer Games (Strategy): There's two: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Imperialism
Video Games (Modern): Halo: Combat Evolved "Cortana, all I need to know is: did we lose them?"
Sci-Fi (Modern): Mass Effect "Remember Vermire?"
Hell, the opening sequence of Halo 2 isn't bad either. Sometimes I still just watch the Blur made cinematic version for the MCC edition start to finish.
"There was only one ship..."
The fact that there's no purchasable version of Alpha Centauri is a crime.
My gift to you, friend:
https://www.gog.com/en/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri
The drones need you. They look up to you.
What!? When did this come out?
First review is from June 9, 2011. So I assume, somewhere around there.
Gotta try other PC platforms other than steam. It's been sitting on there for (looks at clock) 12 years.
Twelve years...
You should probably have diversified away from only Steam a little sooner.
I mean, I use a couple of of distributors, but I never got into GOG, for whatever reason.
Fallout and Fallout 2 were my introduction to isometric RPGs.
Video Games: NES. Mario 3.
Anime: I'm sure I saw quite a few on various kiddy networks and liked them. But I don't think I ever got a true appreciation for it until Outlaw Star.
I forgot about outlaw Star on toonami, yu yu hakusho was another great late night toonami show
The warp whistle blew my mind when I discovered it.
There were three you could get in quick succession, I'm pretty sure all of them in World 1, and so long as you cleared World 1 first, they could then take you straight to World 8.
EDIT: Okay, 2 in World 1, 1 in World 2. But if you claimed both World 1 whistles and cleared World 1 normally, then you could use both whistles to go straight to 8. Using the first in World 1 would only warp you to Worlds 2 through 4, but using it in World 2 would warp you to Worlds 5 through 7.
Yeah, you could basically skip the whole game. Mind: blown.
First game I ever remember playing was some Mickey Mouse one on the SNES. I don't remember a thing about it other than playing it a lot and lugging my SNES with me to a few family gatherings to play it.
Anime was DBZ, and will always be the GOAT. Fuck Super.
I got my start with Commander Keen Episode One: Marooned on Mars. A very endearing game that just isn't the same without the genuine motherboard noises to accompany it.
I haven’t heard of Commander Keen in years!
It's a classic. I remember having to get my Dad to write down the DOS commands to load it from the floppy disk when I was 4 or 5. Good times.
Anime: The DIC dub of Sailor Moon.
Yes, the heavily-censored one. Yes, the one with the "cousins."
But if not for that entry point, I would never have discovered a truly wonderful art form that, over 25 years later, I'm still a huge fan of.
Video games: The NES Action Set, in 1988. One of the last released with the gray Zapper, in fact.
technically my first anime was yugioh which i saw on tv. The first time i started watching subbed anime was Samurai 7, My first manga was Magic Knights Ray earth and the first manga i actually got addicted to was Bleach
First marvel movie was Spider Man's origin story. It didn't really interest me though. Something about the Marvel superhero stuff bores me for some reason.
Video Games: i dont remember my first video game. But i do remember the first RPG game that really hooked me was kingdom hearts chain of memories.
Games: The major start point for me was Red Alert and Age of Empires.
Edit: Honorable mention to Subculture, even though it was a grand flop I still remember it fondly in my childhood.
Anime: Robotech and Voltron
Comics: My brothers Superboy comics and Spectaculsr Spider-Man
Video Games: the Atari home computer and games like Choplifter. First game I really played over and over was double dragon with my friend or the Sierra computer games like space quest and police quest.
Yeah, the question actually asked was, 'how old are you?'
I highly doubt anyone in their 20's here would remember Voltron as their intro.
I’m 42 (will be 43 later this year). Voltron was on when I was a kid. I remember getting the toys for Christmas. Now, maybe they were reruns but it was on. As for that Atari I was 3 or 4 when my parents got it so most of the time I was watching my older brothers play games. You thought I was in my 20s? Sorry for the confusion
I did not. My list is similar except I had a z8 Spectrum and a Macintosh along with the Atari.
Voltron is awesome.
I hated FPS until I played Half Life
Starcraft got me into RTS
First Anime was Robotech
Dragon Warrior on the NES, received for free for subscribing to Nintendo Power, got me into JRPGs.
Games: Mario World and Pokemon Yellow. I got a handmedown SNES and Genesis from my cousins but liked Mario World the most, and I loved getting a Gameboy Pocket with Pokemon Yellow. I played them before I could really read so I just learned through gameplay.
Anime: I watched a lot of stuff as a kid like Inuyasha, Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z, but I never really got into "anime" distinct from cartoons until I watched stuff like Lucky Star and Haruhi online.
I got Pokemon Yellow. Always thought it was strange that that was the one I got. Everyone else I ever knew played Red & Blue.
Anime: Akira
Viyda: NES kiosks at Gemco and Fedco
Comics: father would buy savage sword of conan every month but probably hulk and spider-man
dnd got me into ttrpg, DM had a big tub of minis, but my first 2 efforts were absolutely shite. Wanted to learn, and my local hobby store was rude af, asking a question or just walking in the store was making him look up from facebook. What a burden.
Round the corner the local GW though? They're happy to teach ya. And they welcome ya in like family. So I got into minis and war gaming the normie way, through warhammer.
Games, well the first I remember would be Q*Bert and Keystone Kapers on Atari. PC games would be Monuments of Mars or some game called Chopper Commando I think that I guess we got off a BBS. This was in monochrome mind you. I could navigate around DOS before I even started Kindergarten. First time I was really into games? Early 90s when I got my own hand me down PC and I used to get cheap disks of shareware games at Radio Shack mostly. It was hard to get my parents to let me tie up the phone in those days and by the time Doom came out I wanted to use that limited time to play with my friends.
Anime, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. I go in and out of anime interest. I was never in to comics. I read lots of Star Wars books as a kid.
Inuyasha was the anime gateway, but the gatekeeper was an odd little anime called "Sola", about a guy who photographs clouds and bright skies, and a vampire girl.
Comics: Never got into them. And now they're gone.
Vidya: A fascinating conundrum: I've gamed on vidya all my life, but have I been a "gamer" all my life?
AD Police was my first time experiencing anime, and it blew my little mind. Gaming was way earlier; Crossbow on the Atari 2600. Always watched movies growing up, but I think the experience of Jurassic Park in the cinema was what made me fall in love.
All right, if I'm being honest and can't use pokemon, yu gi oh or a few ghibli films here and there, what got me into anime properly was SAO as after watching season 1 know what my second watch was? Steins Gate, SAO hooked me in, Stein's Gate made it official.
Video games: shit that REALLY takes me back, either Pokemon Blue on a gameboy colour or Theme Park world on the PC
"Anime" - Kimba, the White Lion. My mom would bitch about the low quality animation (she did so about Filmation stuff, too), but the stories and characters were awesome, and it even featured actual character death (the saddest was probably an old turtle.) And I swear I remember an episode called Magic Mask, about a black shamanistic leader of a bunch of African native poachers. He gets shot in the end by a (white) Ranger who was trying to explain to him that the day of the hunter-gatherer is OVER. (People farm. Animals hunt.) Anyway, Osamu Tezuka was about the ONLY Japanese animator I remember as a kid. But I mean, who didn't grow up with Saturday morning cartoons? Or cartoons in general? It would have been gauche back then to give different terms to media just on account of who made it/where it was from. Otherwise, yeah, Disney movies and old Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies and the like. Sunday nights were for The Wonderful World of Disney.
Comics: Grew up with Gold Key comics. WW2 comics (mostly Sgt Rock and Weird War Tales, but I did have the final issue of The Unknown Solider, damnit) the last of the tamed horror comics like House of Mystery or Dark Shadows, Star Trek, there used to be a UFO comic, etc. As well as, of course, Uncle $crooge and Donald Duck comics, and other Disney fare. There was SO much more than capeshit back then.
Video Games: Well, Space Invaders. But when I really started digging on games was when I got a PC in the 90s and discovered there was more than arcade-style stuff, like Dungeon Hack, SimEarth, and Civ. But what really spun my pin was the original Diablo, and Myst. Omg, Myst.
Anime: Digimon Adventure I first got into it when it was airing on Fox Kids, while I was in elementary school. I absolutely fell in love with it. Then, for nostalgia's sake, I streamed it during high school summer vacation. I was surprised by how much I still liked it, and wanted more. I got into Fullmetal Alchemist and that sparked more.
Comics: Fleischers' Studios' Superman My mom bought me some of these Superman shorts on VHS when I was really young. I loved them. They were my first exposure to superheroes. Then later on, I got into Batman: TAS and the Spider-man and X-men shows on Fox Kids.
Sci-Fi Star Trek The Next Generation I've been into Star Trek for as long as I can remember. Star Trek TNG, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager re-runs were on constantly in the 90s. I didn't get into the Original Series until I was into high school. Star Trek became my jumping point into Star Wars, Orson Scott Card, Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Stargate, etc.
Fantasy Harry Potter and Narnia I was exposed to both of these in a public school. (Can you imagine C.S. Lewis taught in a public school today?) While I had enjoyed fairy tales and Disney adaptations thereof before these, Harry Potter and Narnia really got me to appreciate Fantasy as a long-form literary genre.
Video Games Sopwith My family didn't have video game systems,, and my parents were generally opposed to me playing them when I was young. We did, however,, have computers. For some reason, computer games were considered to be different. My earliest game memories are playing Sopwith on an old DOS system that we had in the basement. Then, when we got a more modern computer, I played Harry Potter games, Lego games, Runescape, and online flash games.
Horror Dracula I don't remember exactly when I got into old-school Universal Monsters, but Dracula and vampires were a very early interest for me. I had a comic adaptation of the original Dracula novel that I absolutely loved.
Music Danse Macabre by Saint-Saens/Greatest Hits 74-78 by Steve Miller Band I was exposed to Danse Macabre in elementary school music class, and it was the first piece of music that I remember really getting into. Then, in middle school, I really got into Steve Miller Band when my dad was playing it on a road trip. I sparked a rabbit hole into Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who, Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, and a life-long love of rock and metal.
Anime: I've been watching things like Pokemon and DBZ since I was a kid, but never really associated it with anime itself. For that, it would be Death Note quickly followed by Fullmetal Alchemist 2004.
Manga: Tie between Gunnm and Akira.
Games: OG Doom. Breaking it down into genres, Doom stands for FPS/action, Crash Bandicoot for platformers/adventure, Suikoden 2 for JRPGs/RPGs in general. That covers most of what I tend to play and adjacent categories.
Comics: Hellboy
Film: Always watched film growing up, but the movie that got me invested in film as a specific way to tell stories? Hard to pick one, but Blade Runner is the first thing to come to mind. Unsure if it was the specific one that created that enjoyment, but nothing else is really popping out at me. Maybe Alien? Dunno about that one.
For cartoons it'd have to be Shadow Raiders. They have planets that eats other planets, it's like the Gigastructures Stellaris mod as a 90s cartoon.
For anime I was lucky and caught Hunter D: Bloodlust in 2001, then picked up a copy of Mushishi on DVD from a local library.
For games It'd be Age of Mythology and CoD 2.
Those were the days.