What got you started?

[Zalor]

I talk about this briefly in my profile description, but to give a more detailed reply; it started with my love of the Kanon 2006 anime. Around when I turned 13 I moved on from the shounen phase of my life, and started to explore other genres. Probably my 3rd or 4th anime I watched after exploring the world of non-shounen/completed anime was Kanon, and that changed my life. Kanon got me to realize that visual entertainment could be so much more than what I had previously experienced. So naturally I continued to watch (and enjoy) other completed anime titles of all sorts of genres (I stopped watching shounen all together at this point). Then randomly on YouTube one day I ran across this review of Kanon. It was then that I discovered that the Kanon anime was based off of a visual novel. I was like "Holy shit! I need to read this!". But at that point in my life I was pretty bad with computers and had no idea how get this VN. Eventually I discovered a thing called "torrents" but had no idea how to use them, so I gave up in frustration and moved on with my life.

A few months after than, I decided to look up some freeware VNs in English. I ended up getting my hands on a neat little OELVN titled Memo, and quite enjoyed it. I liked it so much, that I decided to explore what else the OELVN community had to offer (because downloading these VNs didn't require torrents, which at this point in time I still didn't know how to use). I was then deeply disappointed by the next few titles I played, and then dropped VNs altogether for a while. (Btw, to add some perspective. This was during 2010, well before Katawa Shoujo's complete release was out). Than during the winter of that year, I finally sucked it up and figured out not only how to use torrents, but also how to get one of Kanon, and how to patch a VN. I enjoyed the Kanon VN immensely and decided to explore this medium even more. (Only this time, Japanese VNs, not OELVNs since they had deeply disappointed me previously). My next VN was Yume Miru Kusuri, and holy shit did that amaze me. I read Aeka's route all in one day and was quite impressed by this medium. From there I continued to read other VNs from time to time when I found interesting ones that caught my attention.

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[Rose]

Friend of mine called on skype and: "Dude I'm playing a game here and I'm dating a girl with no legs who's a runner and we're having sex right now, though it's just making choices and reading".

Me: "I'm on it".

And that's how I got to read Katawa Shoujo and ended up here, sigh good times.

[CeruleanGamer]

Friend of mine called on skype and: "Dude I'm playing a game here and I'm dating a girl with no legs who's a runner and we're having sex right now, though it's just making choices and reading".

Me: "I'm on it".

And that's how I got to read Katawa Shoujo and ended up here, sigh good times.

Cool story bro. Will read again.  

[Misterroshi]

Friend of mine called on skype and: "Dude I'm playing a game here and I'm dating a girl with no legs who's a runner and we're having sex right now, though it's just making choices and reading".

Me: "I'm on it".

And that's how I got to read Katawa Shoujo and ended up here, sigh good times.

Best story i have read here.

[Clowsama]

I read the first volume of FSN and thought the story was great so investigated a little, found about VN, realized my life was empty until this moment and enjoying my fullest since.

Seriously, long, good quality stories with background, music, voice acting, H-scene and game-like choices? That's the dream, the perfect fusion between novel and games. Thank you Japan.

[Hayashi]

Senpai @ School suggested, started with Konozora, right there.

[Kanbe]

I seek cute bishoujos. That is all

[Bastian77]

It really all started with animes such as Inuyasha, Gundam Seed and Naruto that got me interested in Otaku culture. My first ever visual novel was StartRain and it left a good impression but it never got me hooked on visual novels. 

It was only when I found out there was this awesome site called "Fuwanovel" with all the download links that really got me interested in visual novels. (Before, I just didn't know where to find visual novels) This was the summer of 2014 and that was when I started my spree of visual novels. 

But the funny thing is that I still have some visual novels from last year sitting in my computer that I still haven't touched.