Hmm, that's a really good question.
Well, back when I was seven I got this PC from a friend of my mother who was and still is a very skilled IT engineer (or something similar) and before giving that PC, he installed all the games he had on his other PC for me and there were a bunch of classics like Airfix Dogfighter, Re-Volt and such, and a few (as well as the ones listed above) were some of my favorites but one game really caught my eye and interest and that was Red Alert 2, that was when I began to develop interest on RTS games, and so I started the campaign (the Allies one was the first one, I think) without a clue about what was happening in the game at all (worth to mention that back then I didn't knew how to speak English at all [not that I'm excellent at it now, I'm still bad, especially when it comes to past tense :/] so everything was so foreign for me and even though I was reading through the briefing, having no idea what any of the words meant and failing over and over but I enjoyed the game nonetheless instead of making me to leave it be, that actually motivated me to learn to speak English just so I could finally understand the juicy plot and briefing text
This game made me try hard to learn to speak English and back then this was one of my life goals.
It was until 2009 that I learned that RA2 wasn't just a single game but that it made part of the C&C franchise which made me even hyped about it,I started getting most of the other games, visiting websites (Heavily visiting ModDB and CNCNZ) and eventually heard of APB back when it was Gamma, played it, went away, came back a few years after which brought me here and, well, that's all I guess