I'm quite surprised at the number of people who got into gaming because of Pokemon. I was never a fan of that series, possibly because I was too old for the target demographic at the time of its release, or possibly because I worked in a comic shop that sold the cards, and was driven batty by...
I played a lot of games on Commodore 64 and a local computer system called "Nabu" in the early 80's, but the big push for me to get into gaming was the original Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda for the NES. I told a similar, abbreviated story in the "What got you into Zelda" thread, but...