I started with Atari and War Lords. My husband and I played it with friends. My next foray into gaming was with the NES. We gave our 6 year old son one for his birthday. We played Mario together and moved on the Super NES and games like Contra, Donkey Kong, F Zero, Street Fighter. Then it was Sega Genesis and Mortal Kombat and Sonic. I don't really remember the order but we had the Nintendo 64, Game Cube, Game Boy, and the Wii. We played them all. By this time my older son had moved on to the Xbox and Playstation and his younger brother and I played also. I had so much fun with the Final Fantasy games, Fable, GTA, and so many more. Eventually they started gaming with their friends and I was lucky enough to discover the Sims.
My sons were never very interested in playing the Sims. Like OP mentioned they thought it was a girly game or like playing with dolls. Although they did enjoy building and torturing and killing sims.
