I’m kinda that way with Elder Scrolls. My first one was III (Morrowind) and I’ve still never played the first two.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812390/The_Elder_Scrolls...
[2] https://www.dfworkshop.net/daggerfall-unity-1-0-release/
I had a similar moment in my life when my daughter asked me about D&D late 2010s. They’re grown now but boy did I bombard them with nerddom.
My #1 favorite was accidentally discovering that if you shoot some missiles at the Statue of Liberty in Twisted Metal 2.
A few years later one of my friends was playing GTA III on the PS2 at his home. I also had a PS2, but there was no chance of my parents letting me play that, and I didn’t even play it at his house either.
Later still, Rockstar was giving away GTA 2 for PC for free on their website. So I played GTA 2 a little bit on PC too, after GTA III (and probably Vice City) was already out.
It took many years before I finally had a chance to play GTA III, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. My first time playing GTA III and GTA Vice City was when I was an adult with an iPhone and they sold iOS ports of those games in the App Store. I ended up completing GTA III and GTA Vice City on the iPhone and have played a bit of GTA San Andreas on the iPhone as well, including completing the famous train mission.
Tons of fun on a friends dark green Acer Aspire.
Additionally, you could go under the fences if you parked a heavy vehicle next to them and crawled below it.
Don't forget walking below the city entering the spot where the water was solid on northwest pier.
And finally, if you left the train in the precise spot, you could exit the train on top of the (eletrified) tracks and would not die.
I later got my hands on a copy of GTA2 and played that a lot, behind my parents' back of course
Dropped out of gaming before GTA3 came out, but was given a PlayStation and gta V last year, very disappointed there was no “gouranga”
Anyway, the negative associations I had with GTA I and GTA II stopped me from playing any other GTA game until 4 came out in 2008, at which point I was like, OK, FFS, people won't stop banging on about this so I suppose I'll try it again. I ended up really liking it but, because I only played it on friends' consoles, and I started the game several times over, I never played it all the way through until 2018. I then played through both the expansions, along with GTA V in 2019. I've subsequently gone back to play III and Vice City, both of which I also like - as well as Vice City Stories on the PSP. I've barely touched San Andreas, but the few minutes I have played suggest that I'll also enjoy it.
I've even fired up GTA and GTA II again... but still don't really get on with either of them. I presume there must be others out there who were put off enough by them that it meant they've never touched the rest of the series, or only got into again several games later, but it doesn't seem to be a particularly common experience.