How did you get your first FE game, and what was it?

[Melissa]

Awakening, I kept seeing it at my local Best Buy before picking it up one fateful June 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I got introduced by Ike's presence in Super Smash Bros Brawl. His game interested me. I found a copy of FE10 for a cheap price at Gamestop randomly.

[VincentASM]

I bought Binding Blade while I was on vacation in Hong Kong. Previously, I heard Fire Emblem was basically fantasy Advance Wars, so it piqued my interest.

Afterwards, I ended up beating the game 8+ times because I couldn't get enough of it. However, I had a bootleg copy so the save data eventually stopped working and I lost all my progress >___<

One of these days, I need to buy a legitimate copy of it...

[Rex Glacies]

I knew of Fire Emblem from Smash Bros., but didn't think much of it. Flash forward a couple years, and I was looking for games on the 3DS, which I had had for almost a year yet only had Pokemon Y and Gates to Infinity, and a friend told me that Awakening was supposedly good. I downloaded the demo, and was hooked. First chance I got, I bought an eshop card and downloaded the game onto the 3DS.

[DisobeyedCargo]

I got a 50 dollar eshop card, heard FE was pretty good, and downloaded awakening 

[GreatKnightEcho]

My dad took me out one night to get ice cream and a video game. However, he had one condition for me: the game I bought couldn't be a platformer, like those I got normally, due to them being "too childish." (I don't remember exactly what he said). As I was browsing through the store, I came across a copy of Awakening. I recognized the title from Brawl, and showed the game to my dad. He approved, and let me buy it. I've loved the series ever since.

[Arden88888]

I was looking for a turn based strategy  or real time strategy for the 3ds in late 2015, sadly my computer is not very versatile I cannot really play xcom or age of empires when I decide to be anti-social on holiday's and such : ). The only strategy game I had for the 3ds was shadow wars which is a very easy game even on the higher difficulties, but a friend recommended fire emblem so I went and bought conquest closely followed by birthright and revelations off the Nintendo store. unfortunately me discovering fire emblem isn't very interesting.  

[Bubba Jones]

Oh wow, this is a story, apologies in advance for the text wall.

My first exposure was back in the 90’s when I read a Nintendo Power magazine at the library.  They were short on things to put on it so they did a four page spread on Fire Emblem 4.  I loved what I read and I picked up Suikoden a few years later for the same reasons I liked it.

I learned about emulation back around 2000 and the first thing I played was FE4 with an in progress translation patch.  The script was unfinished so I grabbed most of the text from Pegasus Knight and someone else who uploaded the English text.

A bit later I tried Thracia 776 and was confident enough to try working on the translation myself.  Annnnnndddd...I rage quitted that game and my own work.  I could do text replacement and re-font but I couldn’t do extensions.  Worse the prospect of repeating chapters with multiple different characters alive or dead to test the translation drove me away.  I still haven’t gone back to it and can appreciate the work of whoever is managing the patch.

I didn’t pick the series back up until Sacred Stones and the Tellius games, Shadow Dragon pushed me over to Advance Wars, and I didn’t really get back into it until Awakening.

[Vince777]

Chance. Wanted to get games for my newly bought gba sp and got both the first US released Fire Emblem and Sword of Mana off the shelves, looking for rpgs. 

Sword of Mana was a terrible remake of an already pretty bad older gb game but Fire Emblem had me hooked on what then became one of my favourite vgame series. 

 

[Fastesthe1]

Like most, I was first introduced to the series through Smash Bros., but I had little interest in it at the time (especially since I heard it was difficult series and had permadeath, which scared off younger me, lol).

Years later, during the time when the then-upcoming Smash 4 characters were gradually announced, I was awestruck by one particular trailer featuring a certain blue-haired princess and a magic user I've never even heard of.  Did some quick googling to learn about the characters and left it at that, but the spark of interest was there.

Months later Smash 4 came out and I loved the two additions (Robin in particular became my second main after Zelda).  Sometime after I bought my first 3DS with a copy of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.  While I love the game, I beat it within a week, which sitting on a bus two hours a day commuting to and from college, that didn't bold well for me.  After a second playthrough and some research into Fire Emblem, I went to GameStop and bought Awakening.  I knew I was hooked by the very first chapter!  I seriously played it daily until Fates came out (which I also loved).  Since then I bought all the 3DS releases (beaten them all) and managed to get my hands on physical copies of the Tellius games (still need to beat), as well as the spin-offs TMS and Warriors.

 

I find it hilariously ironic that the first time I ever saw the guy who would one day be my favorite Fire Emblem character, he was face down in the dirt!  Poor Chrom... XD