I got into gaming late, in my 30s, in the early 1990s, with Doom, Descent and other fpss., and it took me a year or two to branch out into other genres. First it was RTSs with C&C, and then my first CRPG was BG, which was immediately captivating, then I played the Fallouts and BGII, and went with mostly BioWare/Troika/Looking Glass CRPGs and immersive sims after that.
Then the decline (consolification, oversimplification) started, and I took refuge in wall-to-wall MMOs for several years, and by the time I came up for air back into single player games, they were well and truly fucked, bar the odd good 'un here and there.
A few years later I went back and retro-appreciated some of the earlier games like Betrayal at Krondor, but I was always too much of a graphics whore to be able to enjoy the really old games.