I must have the only story that isn't like you guys. I remember first being introduced to the series for a brief amount of time when I got locked out of my house in ninth grade. I played as Leon in RE2 and I was enthralled with the game even though I had no idea what I was doing. I left, and had no console that had Resident Evil so I forgot about it.

Then in 2001 (two years later), I went to the mall with my friend and we stop at EB Games and all I had was an N64. There were no good games for N64 to me. Perfect Dark was all I really played. But I saw RE2. Bought it, played as leon again, and loved it. I made it my mission to play every game in the series. That's how the series started for me anyway.