Man, I used to love The Sims. For the PC, I have all 4 Sims games. On top of that, I got a bunch of The Sims console games (The Sims and The Sims Bustin' Out for PS2, The Sims 2 for Gamecube, The Sims 3 for Xbox 360 and MySims for Wii).
Although I don't exactly remember when I first got into the series, I think it was around 2005. I ended up getting The Sims Bustin' Out (PS2) for my birthday that year, and just fell in love with the series. It was just really neat as a kid to be able to create these fictional people and play out their lives and what not. I played that game a bunch and beat it multiple times, lol, although I relied on cheats pretty extensively. I also rented The Sims (PS2) a bunch and beat that as well (again, with cheats) before I ended up just buying it outright years later. I would later get The Sims Deluxe Edition (PC), enjoyed it, wanted to get more expansion packs for it, so I ended up getting The Sims Complete Collection (PC). I got some good entertainment out of it, though I didn't play it as much as I should have, I feel.
My love and interest for the series definitely peaked with The Sims 2 (PC), though. iirc I got The Sims 2 Deluxe for my birthday in 2008, but not 100% sure on that. But I absolutely loved it. The main core mechanic addition of Sims actually being able to age and live out full lives before dying just captivated me so much compared to the previous entries. I would play it daily, I got all the expansion packs (and most of the stuff packs) for it, and I really enjoyed just playing out the lives of the Sims I had created and doing all I could to make their lives the best they could be. I have fond memories of playing it, got tons of value out of it and the expansion packs, and it was definitely worth all the money spent getting the expansion/stuff packs for it since it just made my experience with it that much better. A bit sad that those save files I played on are basically lost forever since they were on an old laptop and I never copied them over, but hey, that's the way it goes. I also got The Sims 2 for Gamecube at some point during this time and beat it, though it didn't hold my attention as much as the PC or even PS2 games did.
But my love for the series kind of just disappeared during The Sims 3. I got the Collector's Edition when it came out, played it a fair amount, also got the first expansion pack, but then I sort of just stopped playing. As cool as the whole world being visible and what not was, the loading times were brutal and it didn't help my laptop couldn't run it as smoothly as it did The Sims 2, so it made it a lot harder to get into. I would get The Sims 3 for Xbox 360 later on, played it for a good week or so, and then stopped. That was the last time I played the Sims for years. I played MySims briefly last year, where I kinda just blitzed through it in order to beat it and move on. To end this, I got The Sims 4 when it was free on Origin, but I still haven't gotten around to playing it yet.
Anyways, that was long as heck. I guess the whole thing is that while I enjoyed The Sims, I kinda just lost the passion for it as the years have gone by, especially with struggling to get into The Sims 3 and with so many other games coming out and taking my attention instead. I stopped following along with any news about The Sims games, and I sort of just lost the motivation to want to play it again. If I ever went back to The Sims and played it again, I'd go with The Sims 2, though, since I feel like it hasn't been topped (of course, saying that without playing 4, but I kinda doubt it beats out 2 for me).
