Perhaps this thread's been done before. If so, sorry.

How I discovered it: I'd had the game since I was 12, but never was much interested in it. Then I turned into an adult and got more into video games, especially the Half-Life series. I found my copy of the Sims 2 while cleaning up a shelf and thought it'd be funny to make a Gordon Freeman sim. I did that a while, broke Pleasantview, and then forgot about it. A few months later I then found a copy of Double Deluxe at a flea market. I really got into the game then and even tracked down the rest of the EPs and SPs. That's my story.

I honestly don't remember. It kinda bugs me that I don't remember since Sims has ment so much in my life, but I really don't remember. I know it started with Sims 2, I got some CD's, I believe I had all the EP's and none of the SP's or maybe I had Teen Style Stuff...and I played them, this was near the end of Sims 2 I know that much that I first got into it, in my later teens. I eventually discovered some Sims forums, and then got into Sims 3, but never could abandon Sims 2 (and never will if I can help it) and now I happily play both depending on my mood but no idea how I got into Sims 2 in the first place...

My memory sucks

I was playing Sims 1 and my husband gave me a copy of the new Sims 2 for either a birthday or Christmas present that he had found at the local BigW shop. I don't know how long it had been out, probably not very long. I wasn't a part of the community so I hadn't known a new version was coming out. He just thought I would like it. Took me a day to get use to, at first I thought the new perspective would make me feel slightly giddy but I quickly got use to it was hooked and never went back to sims 1. I then bought each EP and SP as it came out, many bought by hubby as birthday/mother day/Christmas presents. Poor man isn't good at getting gifts but he knew he could always get me something sims related.

I was more or less happily playing Sims 1 when Sims 2 was being brought out-I swore up and down that I'd never play it-not in my life time.

Of course one of the few games I have on my machine is none other than Sims 2. I'd be loath to give it up now. Sims 1 is distant memory.

My mom, unknown to me, played Sims a lot back when 1 came out (After talking to her, it turns out she got into it while she was pregnant with me because she couldn't go out of the house because of health issues). She could probably enter a building contest on MTS and win, that's how good she got. Well, in my younger years, my mom decided to get me MySims for Christmas back when we didn't have much money. I thought this was this random thing she found at a thrift store or something, so I never really inquired. When school went back in session, I told my best friend all about my new game, and he responded enthusiastically to the mention of Sims, telling me about 3 and how great it was.

I had to have it. The next Christmas, my uncle got me what I had wanted for ages: The Sims 3. However, it felt kind of empty, and after discovering Sims 2 Let's Plays on YouTube, i wondered if I could have that. In June 2014, I found The Sims 2 base game, University, and Nightlife at a local Savrs, waiting to be bought. Did I mention they were the fancy boxes? I begged my mom for it, but she refused. Then, a month or so later, The Sims 2 Ultimate Colletion became my obsession. I hadn't discovered my mom's Sims 1 stash, but when I did, I was PUMPED. All 3 Sims games were MINE!!!!!!

I'd been a fan of SimCity since childhood, and occasionally there was reference to or an ad of the Sims included with the games. SimCity 4 even included the ability to import sims from the Sims 1. I always thought the game sounded interesting, but every time I was reminded of it I either didn't have the money or didn't have a computer capable of handling it. Fast forward to a couple of years ago, I came across a thread while visiting my usual forum haunts and read that EA was giving away The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection for free with a special coupon code. Since I already had an Origin account just moldering, I blazed on over to dust it off and grab a copy. So I'm pretty much a newbie compared to most of the active players here XD

Oh, this is a funny one. Husband and I were doing I don't know what, down at the local used games shop and computer parts shop. Probably buying parts. But we always glanced over the cheap rack, you know how you do. He'd been telling me for a while I ought to try playing Sims 2, that it looked like the sort of game I would like. I liked SimCity, didn't I?
It looked like a tween game, with the barbie-doll-esque art on the box. No thanks!
But it was on sale for $7, so he bought it for me. It was the Happy Holiday edition of base game. Since he'd spent perfectly good money on it, like an hour's wages after taxes, I had to try playing it, and of course that was all it took. Geez, that was a while ago. (He makes a lot more, now: he's gone from helpdesk to sysadmin.)

I had Sims1 when I found out about Sims2. found out about Sims2 through some site's newsletter; I think IGN. ordered Sims2 within several months from its release; first played Sims2 within several years after it arrived (compatibility issues).
Sims1; found out from watching a relative playing it. I think I ordered Sims1 around year 2002; though do remember buying the Deluxe Edition and Unleashed in 2002. gave my Sims1 discs & manuals to a nephew I think several months before Sims2's release.

needed to re-install Sims2 several times; computer problems not related to the game. I do not remember the problems nor the times of re-installing.
past times playing began with the tutorials.

My best friend got me into Sims 1 when we brought her (and our laptops) on a family vacation. Despite the problems with my self-sim, I was excited when Sims 2 came out. Then I found out my roommate in college was a Sims 2 player as well. We went and got the Holiday Edition series together! We played side by side, but she kind of got sad with the game after she made Bella and Edward from Twilight Romance sims. My poor roomie never got over their wants to flirt with other people.

From the Sims 1 of course.

Same. I believe my older brother bought Sims 1 since he was familiar with previous versions of SimCity (he was studying architecture/city planning). He introduced it me when I was about 10. It actually took me a while to start Sims 2 since I took a long break away from sim games during my teen years to play multiplayer shooters. :D

I played Sims 1 as well, so the later EPs were already advertising the next in the series. I cannot remember how I got into Sims 1 though.

Apparently when I was about 4ish, I used to sit on my mum's legs and watch her play or watch my older siblings play Sims 1. I remember when I really started playing it by myself Sims 2 was already advertised to be coming out soon. No one else really played it other than me by then, but I saved up my pocket money at the time and got Sims 2 when it came out (my parents helped with savings secretly and added a little more.) Since then I've been playing the game. :D

I can kind of blame my Uncle, He had Sim City 4 in 2003 and gave it to me in 2005(? Not totally sure). Then I asked him for this other cool Sims Game, Sims 2. I couldn't have it because it belonged to my cousin. I was insistent on having the game for myself which I did get in 2007 and Sims 2 Pets and Apartment life in 2007 and 2008 Respectively. My mother saw that I had an addiction to it early on and as such got very irritated when I would play it, partially due to hour long loading times and 20 mins to just open the Building menu, this was with Just Sims 2 Pets and Apartments with NO mods. If she ever knows how often I still play it, well...

then came the break from the game for about 3-4 years due to restriction and inability to play it. then I got this really bad computer in 2012 Christmas which has survived 3 years of 2.5 Gb of CC on top of the full UC. the old Family computer would have died under all that.

So that's how I discovered this game, and I haven't put it down since. (figuratively speaking, of course)

My older brother and sister used to play The Sims 1 and I saw it once and really wanted to play it. So I did and my brother and sister quit after that. I never did. The Sims 2 was already out at that point, so I moved on swiftly but still came back to the first game sometimes.

i started playing Sims 1 around the time when the megastar and makin magic expansions came out and I absolutely loved it. When sims 2 came out, I didn't have the money to buy it, but my friend who I had gotten into SIms 1 had. So we talked about nothing else for weeks and sometimes I played on her computer until I had saved enough money to buy sims 2. I guess I was around 11 years old or so.

I've always been into puzzles and adventures, and always had better things to do than play a stupid game such as The Sims. Until a friend showed me the fun he had with TS2. That was around the time that either Kitchen and Bath, or IKEA Stuff had just been released.
I saw some of the game play, was intrigued, and quickly caught up with the current state of affairs. Since then, I cannot imagine the day that I will no longer play this game.
I have borrowed the complete TS1 collection from another friend for about a week, but found out that this wasn't my thing. I'm never going to check out TS3 or 4, because I have accepted that TS2 is my *fix*.

I think it was in summer 2002 (and The Sims 1 of course!), when i was at my ex-best friends house.

We used to play in the garden but on that day, the weather got as bad as it can and we had to play indoor. Her big brother played a little game on the computer and as bored as we were, we took a look at it.
Small people were doing their stuff and my ex-best friend's brother told me, that he was playing The Sims 1. I thought, that it was a funny game to play and begged for it when i was home, but my parents said no. ^^

Two years later, around Christmas i guess, when i had my own computer, i saw that music video on Viva or MTV. It was sung by the german singer Jeanette Biedermann (called "Run with me") and there were Sims in it!
I fell in love with them little people again and now, that i had my own computer, my parents bought me the game. <3

Since then, i played the game for thousands of hours and i still can't get enough

On the back of the box of Superstar! Or actually, more likely, on newsnet. We discussed it for months before it was released.

I found out about TS1 from playing Sim City 2000 (still a contentder for my most played game ever) and found out about that by playing the original Sim City (a game I still have a secret fondness for). That takes us back to 1989 and the end of childhood.

I first became aware of The Sims when I saw adverts for the first version of the game (Sims 1) in computer magazines when it first came out, but I really wasn't interested. SimCity looked more my kind of thing, but both games were dear and I wasn't at all confident that the computer I had then would run them. I had little interest in computer games.

Much later (when I had a broadband connection for the first time) I started finding images of CC clothes (MTS, InSimenator and TSR) in Google searches. Then I discovered YouTube and started seeing videos (some of them a bit naughty ) of Sims games, and I liked what I saw. I realised they weren't real people because of those funny things floating above their heads. I got interested enough to look up The Sims on Wikipedia, and discovered that there were [then] three versions of The Sims. I vaguely wondered about whether The Sims 2 might run on my computer, a netbook, but [then] almost brand new. I read about the EPs on Wikipedia and thought that FreeTime and Bon Voyage looked interesting.

Then in the autumn of 2012 I saw a copy of Double Deluxe for only £7 in our local Morrisons supermarket. I went home and checked Wikipedia again to see what was in Double Deluxe, and it definitely looked good value. Next time I was in Morrisons I looked again. I knew it was an old game, and I was afraid if I delayed too long I might miss my chance. I looked at the system requirements. Most of that looked ok for my computer, but I wasn't sure about the video. However I thought it's an old game and I've got a new computer. Knowing how today's entry-level computer tends to be better than a 5-year-old high end one, I thought I'll just take a chance and see if it installs. After all it's only seven pounds. It was early November 2012.

Thus I took one of the most fateful decisions of my life! I had no idea how much difference it would make to my life. I didn't install it right away. I spent several weeks reading the little manual booklet that comes with the game. Then in late November I installed the game, and it installed with no hitches. I played around in Body Shop for a day or two. I downloaded some CC swimwear for the teenage boy I was planning to create, and then I made a pair of white underpants for him using the downloaded swimwear as a starting point. Then I played the tutorial and met Tutorial Joe and his consort. And finally on the morning of 30th November 2012, I started up the game, opened Veronaville, created Knowledge teenager Andrew Jones and his Romance mum Gloria, and moved them into 19 Chorus Court. And I think the rest is history.

A few days later I joined MTS to get at more CC clothes. And a few days after that I made my first post because I couldn't work out how to get Gloria to meet Garry Mackay, the boyfriend I had made for her. After that I lurked on the forum for a few months before I started posting regularly. I began to get worried about my low-spec netbook and its on-board integrated graphics chip, and EllaCharmed warned me that my PC really wasn't up to playing The Sims 2. But by then I had fallen in love with Andrew, Gloria and Co., and was too addicted to stop!! Fortunately I was lucky. My version of Double Deluxe turned out to have a variant of the OFB game engine, and OFB turns out to be the highest EP that plays satisfactorily on low end graphics chips. Had I installed Pets, I might indeed have burned out my graphics chip, but I stuck with the OFB game engine and, nearly 4 years later. I've had no graphics problems. And I'm totally in love with my Sims.

I'd played Sims 1 when it was new, so it was natural for me to make the jump to Sims 2 after seeing the commercials. Sims 2 was such a huge improvement that I never looked at TS1 again. Time passed and I stopped playing games. Then several years later, TS3 came out, and I got it, expecting the same sort of massive leap forward that happened the last time. That did not happen, but it turned out that I missed the Sims. I uninstalled Sims 3, repurchased Sims 2 and discovered it all over again.

For the life of me, I cannot find the commercial right now - but it featured a toddler and a child hitting the TV with a bat, and it was explaining all the different aspirations. I remember seeing that advert on TV when I was around 9 years old and thinking "Wow! I want that game so bad!". So my Mum bought me Sims for the Ps1 (or ps2?) which I loved and would play for hours. I had heard about the Sims before, because when I was younger my Dad had a copy of SimCity on his office computer but I didn't think much of it at the time.

Then Christmas 2004 rolled around, and I was surprised with a new 'family computer', and a copy of Sims 2. I was so excited. Not long after we also ended up with every Sims 1 game, I can't remember how. Perhaps they were bought as gifts - because everyone in my family knew how much I liked Sims, so every birthday/Christmas I'd end up with a new EP or SP until I received Sims 3, didn't like it much, and then everyone thought I had 'outgrown' it.

I already was into simulation games before sims 1 was there. From time to time I looked in the store at the games and one day I saw sims 1 and thought, hé, that looks neat, cute etc, want to have it. So, it started with that. Got bored with it eventually but then I discovered later there was a sims 2 and I moved on to that and have stuck to it ever since. Of course, there are times I don't play or do anything with it, but I know I'll always come back to it.

My older sister got me hooked into the Sims; this also includes other Maxis titles like Sim Copter, Sim Tower, and SimCity Societies.

Back in July when I came to visit her and had my laptop set up at the "computer room", she was playing Sims 4 while I had Sims 2 going. She even once tried to convince me to upgrade to Sims 3 since I do own the game and some of its expansions on Origin, but I just could not surrender the first Sims sequel. What's funny is how she's more into 3 over 2 whereas I'm the other way around.

In the very beginning, she let me borrow the original Sims and some expansions available for a bit. Every day after school I would head straight to my computer to play some Sims and the experience overall was a blast. Even though I had to give it back at some point, I couldn't stop talking about. I even remembered I took the Sims to my computer classes back in high school when we had days off, so to speak, and I had to fill out those stupid serial codes every time I installed them. They had the computers set up to where they forget everything new done to them after a restart or a shut down.

Then my sister introduced me to Sims 2 when it came out, and this was before she decided to let me adopt the first Sims which I still have today. Sims 2 was undoubtedly a novel experience from Sims 1, a major upgrade from its predecessor, and I felt my love for Sims sprouted anew. The new 3D atmosphere, the cheery music throughout the game, and an improved method for creating Sims on a much wider spectrum really did it for me. Although I had just the base game plus some stuff packs, it was still very fun, and eventually she let me keep those games, too. I think that was when Sims 3 came out but I don't recall very well.

It wasn't until years later that I thought of getting back to the Sims series on this laptop when the idea came to me last year, and that rekindled my love for the games. I played Sims 1 for a bit until I had to revive my laptop from a near-deadly windows update, then I returned to Sims 2. Eventually, I convinced myself to coax EA into giving me the ultimate collection after I started getting bored with just the base game, and that's where I still stand today with the entire Sims 2 collection.

I bought the April 2000 edition of Computer Gaming World because it had a preview of several racing games as its main feature. (Usually my parents bought the magazines, but this one I spotted in the newsagent before they did). It just so happened that this was the issue where The Sims 1 got reviewed. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before in a game. But I couldn't buy it at the time because it was too expensive for my pocket money, even at the computer fair. At Christmas, my parents got it for me as a present, installation went great... ...then the dreaded "Not enough RAM!" appeared on screen. A few days later, Dad got me another 8 MB of RAM and the second attempt went better. So much better that for the next three months I didn't play any other game on my computer. My brother played it for a week but didn't see the attraction. For me, though, it was a fount of never-ending surprises, initially for learning how these strange beings thought, interacted and tried not to burn their cooking, then for the endless story-telling and story-exploring capabilities.

I was really unsure about going to Sims 2, but my brother thought I was being a bit silly and got it for me as a Christmas present in 2004. Four hours later, I left my room long enough to hug him and tell him he was right and I was wrong.

Luckily, I was able to try Sims 3 on a demo games machine in a local shopping centre before it was released, and was able to warn my family that it really wasn't up to Sims 2 standard and that their money would be better spent on getting me Sims 2 Mansions & Gardens