I started playing in November 2000 at the age of 5 (this super cool username actually dates from then lol), because my cousin got bored of hers and gave me her copy. I still have that original CD! Anyway, because of that and my short attention span, I've probably had tens of thousands of Sims, and thus don't have a ton of pics for all of them. Many I couldn't even tell you what they looked like or what their names were, but I can remember their stories. Also, unlike a lot of people, I don't really make "stories" in the sense of taking screenshots and writing things down; I just kind of go with the flow and live their lives, but that makes remembering them years later quite hard.
I especially like playing premades, so lots of these are premade families. (It frustrates me to no end that I always have to make a Sim before playing a game on TS4, when I want to play with premades).
The first family I ever played was the Goth family. They, especially Mortimer, remain very close to my heart. I think I'm attached to Mortimer mainly because he looked a lot like my dad, just with fancier clothes lol. In any case, I must have played them dozens of times and spent hundreds of hours with them overall. I do remember one occasion where Bella got abducted by aliens and, this being after TS2, I couldn't help but laugh and relate it to her disappearance.
One of my favorites was a family I had in Makin' Magic, which was the first family I was able to afford to move into the magic realm (or whatever it was called lol). They had a cute little house and gnomes to protect it. I actually remember very little else, just an immense sense of pride that I made it there.
I also had a save with the Burb family; they ended up having a daughter, so she and Johnny had to bunk in the same room. I remember I, without thinking, had them set off fireworks in that room... the whole room caught fire and it was not pretty. I felt bad for Brad and Tiffany having to live without their kids. But I made it into a story, and they later had another kid, and I like to think they were able to start to heal.
In TS2, the Broke family has always been a favorite of mine. I always take pride when I can get Dustin to turn his life around, become a straight-A student, help out around the house, and become a really good big brother. Beau is just adorable, and I like to experiment with different paths for his life, and then the baby always amuses me, being Brandi's clone (though sometimes I cheat to re-attach the kid to Skip).
I also like the Ottomas family, despite them being pretty ugly (thus making them disliked by many, especially given the glitch they originally had). Managing to take care of them all was always a struggle (thank goodness for CC bunk beds, or I wouldn't have been able to fit them all half the time!), but rewarding. I was always so sad when Dora died, and sometimes made her drink so much Elixer of Life that she would end up the same age as her son (because he'd age during that time, unlike her)
Another favorite of mine was the Striker family from TS3. I had one save that I played them for probably a few weeks, which is exceptionally long for me. They got a butler, had twins, were very successful in their jobs, Sebastian became a child and was thriving... and then I had a glitch where Richie vanished from the game entirely - no cheat or mod or anything could bring him back. And because I had an auto-save mod and hadn't realized he'd vanished (his icon was still there), I'd let the game save after he vanished, so he was lost forever. I think I kept playing and got Stella remarried, but it never felt the same after losing Richie. RIP Richie :lol:
One of my favorite families I made for TS3 was my 100 baby challenge family. I think I only got to about 20 or so before the house caught fire and like 7 of them died. I think I tried to keep playing after that by going back to a save I'd made a few Sim-days before, but sort of lost interest. It was neat, though, as I'd downloaded some baby daddies, and one was the son of the Grim Reaper so he had that glitchy, pitch-black skin, and she had triplets with him, so there were 3 Grim Reaper grandkids running around lol. I actually do have screenshots from that family, thankfully (and wow, just looking, that was 8 years ago this month!) I even have pics of the fire and its aftermath.
As for TS4, one of my favorites was my Bob's Burgers family I made after Dine Out came out. They ended up having 6 more kids (I had a mod for quadruplets, quintuplets, and sextuplets at the time and they had sextuplets!), which did not make their lives easier lol. Gene grew up to be a hunk somehow, though, so it was okay :lol: I'm certain I have screenshots of that family somewhere, probably backed up on my external hard drive (I purge my screenshots folder every year or two because it gets so full, and only keep the ones I really like).
Those are all I can think of off the top of my head, and this is already a really long post (sorry, got nostalgic!) But thanks for the trip down memory lane, and for everyone's posts thus far. They've been really interesting to read!