Nice thread btw
I was only four years old when I first came across Oddysee, back in 1999. Me and my brother used to watch our mum play the demo version (just like on the video above), and used to get her to play it again and again for over a year because we loved it and didn't know how to play ourselves. During this time I went to nursery school and can distinctively remember drawing pictures of Abe and making collages of him too, out of these green/blue sticks.
Me and my brother used to also play what we called: 'Abe's Oddysee: Around the house', where one of us would be Abe, and the other would be a mudokon, and we'd pretend to be going around RuptureFarms, saying "Hello" and "Follow Me" - in the house IRL.
We would also sometimes stick broccoli or chips up our nostirls when eating dinner and talk like Abe. Looking back, I can't believe it had such a huge impact on me when I was only four or five years old!
We found and bought the full game when I was about 8 or 9, and played through the levels, but got stuck after the Stockyard Escape. We played again when I was about 11, but got stuck
again - in Scrabania this time. Then when I was 14 we decided to give it another go, and completed the game in a few weeks (but got the bad ending). I really loved it, and we found out about Exoddus so bought that and completed it that summer (2009), and got the bad ending. This was where I joined the forum, because I really wanted to start making my own levels and loved the RuptureFarms levels to bits. (To the point where I could draw a map of ALL the RuptureFarms Zulags from MEMORY, with every single item etc. in the correct position).
Since then, I've got all 99 and 300 mudokons on both games and have made the Level Variations Thread - which has proved pretty popular. Me and my brother haven't touched any other Oddworld game, in fear it will be disappointing and not like the old ones. It's interesting how early all you guys came across Oddworld, it seems like a game that many people ended up coming across from a really young age, and have loved it since!