How were you introduced to the Dragon Quest series?

We all have our own story about how we discovered and fell in love with this series. What was yours? Personally, I was introduced with the free copy of Dragon Warrior that was given away with a 1991 subscription to Nintendo Power. My parents thought it was a good deal and went for it. I had no idea what a JRPG was and no idea what I was getting into; I think I spent the first week running away from every monster because I didn't understand the point of fighting them if they only ever killed me. Then after being a reckless and winning a battle with a Slime, my experience points went from 0 to 1. "Ohh, I get it now." It was onward and upward from there. I beat the DragonLord countless times, I maxed out to level 30 and I maxed out my experience points and gold to 65,535 (which I discovered later on is actually a memory limitation).