I started with Daggerfall in December of 1996, so Skyrim will mark my 15th anniverary with the series as well. It's mind boggling that the series has been part of my life for that long. Chalk it up to nostalgia-bordering-on-insanity, but when I'm at my parents' house I often dig out the old Daggerfall box and page through the still-excellent manual. As a 9th grader I trekked across a baffling amount of randomly generated desert terrain in search of those Alik'r dragons. So far, no sightings.
Well you've taken the words out of my mouth.
I started in 1996 when we got the Betony demo on a PC Gamer CD. I played it alot...always creating new characters each time I'd hit the time limit. (Too bad Betony as the island's capital is not in the final game)
I then asked for the full game for Christmas and got it that December.
I, too, read the game's manual from time to time. I never tire of reading it. Same with Arena's. And I bought the Daggerfall's Chronicles 2-3 years ago and it's a great read. Lots of technical details and hidden game mechanics never mentioned in the manual.
I also tried to find Alik'r Dragons with a Khajiit Assassin I had made. All I found were Dragonlings... but I was
convinced there were dragons around.
Now I have all TES titles except for the cell phone ones. I bought Arena on Ebay for 1$ in 2003. The manual and game box are in French but the game isn't. Those who were seeking the game instead bid on the english versions of the game for pretty big amounts. :chaos: