When did you get into Mass Effect?

I'm curious when everyone here started playing the games. Personally, I started in 2010 the week Mass Effect 2 launched. I knew about the first game and I remember building a pc with a friend and told him to test his graphics card with "Mass Effect" since it was one of the latest Next Gen games at the time. But it always seemed a bit boring to me, like something was missing.

Then trailers and game footage appeared of Mass Effect 2 and I had just played Gears of War and Uncharted 2, so I thought the idea of elements from that first sluggish game paired with more normalized video game action was extremely novel and cool. But I was turned around by the narrative when I got an hour into it, so I immediately bought ME1 for myself, played through it, enjoyed it, and then finished ME2.

Suffice it to say, I became a big fan, and the months leading up to Mass Effect 3's release felt like Christmas... because it was actually Christmas 3 months before the game launched!