Mine was The Secret of Monkey Island. I was only around 4/5 years old at an older friend’s house, and I still remember how blown away I was by being able to be a pirate and how amazing Melee Island looked at night. 

Spent many hours as a group, wandering around having absolutely no idea what we were supposed to be doing.

I've been rather late to the party. We didn't have a computer or console when I was a child, but my brother still lived at home when he went to university, and he bought a computer I was allowed to use when he wasn't using it. He bought a few games, because he was curious about gaming, and one of the first games he bought was John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles.
It was a disturbing horror adventure in a haunted asylum turnd into a museum, and the puzzles weren't too hard for us rookies, so both of us were hooked. Classics like MI3 and Gabriel Knight followed. I got my first own adventure game that Christmas: Gabriel Knight 3. It didn't run properly on my brothers computer, so I didn't finish it until around Easter, when I bought my first on PC.
When the Lucas Arts 10 Adventures Box was released later that year, it was a must have for me. I've been a huge adventure fan ever since. I play other genres, too, but those depent on my mood, while my craving for good adventure games is permanent.
I was 18 at that time, and my love for the genre has only grown deeper over more than a quarter of a century now.

You know that feeling where you create a thread and hope at least ONE person replies? Thankfully, this topic was such a resounding success that it received 21 replies. I've read every single response so far, and honestly, they are the highlight of the forum for me.

Vicariously experiencing those heart-felt memories of adventure games has been a wonderful insight into the various initial starting points that can kickstart a lifelong shared passionate interest. Thanks everyone. To any future AGH members, feel free to drop by and regale us with your own sentimental stories.

I really like this thread. I'd contribute but I've not managed to tap into these experiences as of late. These stories are wonderful, though.

One of my earliest was one called Torin's Passage. Such a weird game, but it captured my imagination.

(PS: This is an amazing thread)

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Mine was The Secret of Monkey Island. I was only around 4/5 years old at an older friend’s house, and I still remember how blown away I was by being able to be a pirate and how amazing Melee Island looked at night. 

Spent many hours as a group, wandering around having absolutely no idea what we were supposed to be doing.

Same (on other games). I can't say I finished many games as a kid... but maybe it didn't matter lol

King's Quest (the bootloader version), for the IBM PC.

This would have been sometime back in 1984, though I don't remember when. I just remember that we moved that summer to a new town, and this was before then, and being that the game came out in 1984, that doesn't leave much of a timespan of when I could have acquired it.

One weekend during that year, my parents, along with my aunt, took my sister and I to visit a chocolate factory somewhere in Vermont. It was on the way back, we stopped off at a computer store. There I saw what I felt was the best-looking video game ever. It looked like a real cartoon compared to what other computer games looked like of that day. My aunt ended up purchasing it for my sister and me.

I played this game way too much to the point that the disk wore out and the computer would not boot it. Nor did I comprehend what save disks were. The game always prompted to enter the letter A-Z, which I didn't quite understand back then. And it wasn't until the early to mid 1990s when I finally guessed the gnome's name. I believe after a few years I finally ended up calling their 900 number multiple times to get the answer, but even Sierra's hint line was just that, hints. It only told you what to do, not what the answer was. It didn't help that I later found out that they themselves misspelled the name, which is why I probably never was able to guess it earlier, because I know for a fact I had tried the correct method.

My first ever adventure game was Wishbringer from Infocom. I was maybe 4 or 5, possibliy even younger when we first played it. I couldn't even read properly yet, so I would sit on my Mom or Dad's lap with my sister and my parents would read it to us or, as we got older, help us with hard words like "refrigerator" or "grue." I didn't know that saving the game was an option, so I never beat it because I would get caught by the semi-ranomly wandering boot squad and thrown in jail and that would be game over and I would just restart the whole game.

When I was a kid and didn’t yet have a PC, I read a local gaming magazine that featured a walkthrough for Monkey Island 1. I enjoyed it like an adventure novel, and I knew I’d love the adventure genre once I finally got a computer. I also loved Choose Your Own Adventure books, and the adventure genre gave me exactly that - but in the form of games.

Before I had a PC, I owned a Commodore 64, though there weren’t many point-and-click games for it. Actually, I remember only one - Tristan and Isolde, which I played on it, so you could say that was my first real adventure game experience.

Day of the Tentacle might have been my second, because I played it on a friend’s computer - or rather, watched him play. Once I got my own PC, a buddy brought me six discs of Gabriel Knight 2 (as you might guess from my avatar), Fate of Atlantis, and some other hit games - so those were the first ones I played on PC.

Well... here at Boxblue Studios we have differing age ranges. Ryan is a child of the 90's whereas I am... well, significantly older... so much so that my introduction to Adventure Games came through Text only adventures on the Acorn Electron and Spectrum!

I've always loved to read because I am unashamedly a smegging nerd and there were several text only adventure games that immediately piqued my interest. The one that really 'got me' was 'The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring' by Melbourne Games. The edition I got had the book of 'The Fellowship' inside the packaging... I was blown away. I could 'GO NORTH' in the Shire and eventually even 'TALK GANDALF' when you got so far. Happy days.

By this stage I had upgraded (in a co-ownership with my brother) to an Atari ST. The leap was huge and then came the hybrids... The Pawn, Guild of Thieves and then... Corruption! What a game. Just playing the cassette that came with the game was complete immersion into the game world (the real world of the 1980's) with good voice actors portraying the parts. Immersive text adventures with high quality stills? How could Adventure games get any better?...

Walking.

This is when I discovered such titles as Leisure Suit Larry and Future Wars. Game. Changed. There was now a guy on the screen that was ME (or I was him... one or the other). These games absolutely stole my heart. I loved them and I got as many as pocket money, birthdays and Christmas would allow!

However the final game changer and the game that set me on the Point and Click Adventure path for life was... Beneath A steel Sky. I remember reading the review in C&VG back in the day and then having no other thought than 'I must have this game'. It was the perfect Adventure Game experience. I completely loved it from the first second through to the last. I played it by myself. I played it with my brother. I played it with my friends. It was, and still is, incredible.

I've never looked back since then. Yeah I've played action games, first person shooters, third person adventure and all of that. But my heart belongs to point and click.

Always has. Always will.

My first contact with adventure games was probably Secret of Monkey Island.

I don't know where my older brother got that box from as a kid - we had the boxed topshots cdrom version back then, in the 90s.
I played it together with my brother, we helped each other solving the puzzles, which was fun. Back then there were no written online walkthroughs or even youtube let's plays. 

The game wasn't my first contact with computer games in general - we had a commodore 64 before that, so the graphics of this one were kinda mindblowing for us. And the beautiful box art!

Playing Le Chuck's Revenge afterwards was funny as well. We started the game and really thought we did something wrong when Largo took away our stuff, starting the game again, trying to prevent that.  

edit: About "GO NORTH" kind of text adventures: We had one on the C64, but it was before I learned reading English, so I didn't know what to do. I never found out which game it was, just remember a Path, green ground, and simple (one color) flat triangular trees.