I remember this topic was addressed a bit in the old
Games That Are Important to You thread, so it's pretty much the same story for me here.
I think I was inevitably doomed to enjoy video games though. Even if I had somehow ignored our Atari, or avoided playing
Super Mario Bros. with my friend, I surely would have been distracted by our neighbor's copy of
Batman on NES, or eventually the
Ninja Turtles Arcade game. Cartoons and toys were just a big part of my childhood, so there was no way I would have avoided video games for long, especially with how much fun a lot of those old licensed titles were.
This reminds me of how close I came to ignoring some games though. My brother was actually the one that convinced me to rent my first
Megaman game (MM2), and I don't remember our rental stores carrying any other Megaman titles after that until
MMX came out. One of my other friends was also a regular at the local arcade, so if not for a chance outing with him, I might never have been introduced to
Street Fighter 2 either.
I also wouldn't have revisited RPG's if it wasn't for the Virtual Boy!
Dragon Warrior had left such a bad impression on me as a kid, that I totally avoided the genre for years. However, what caught my eye one day was the Nintendo Power issue with Virtual Boy featured on the cover. Hours later, after glossing over the Virtual Boy article, I actually found myself drooling over the screenshots of
Chrono Trigger in the back of the book. I had already convinced myself that games like
Secret of Mana and
FF3 weren't worth my time until then, so I'm pretty certain that I would have ignored CT if it wasn't for that magazine.
Thanks Virtual Boy!