I was living in Hikarigaoka Japan when suddenly I hear loud noises that sounded like explosions and I could barely see over the crowd of people what appeared to be a giant green bird fighting an orange dinosaur.
Actually, my first experiences with Digimon are really scattered and vague and I'm almost certainly forgetting my actual first experience. Being born in 1997 with no older siblings, I was barely too young to have caught the hype that Adventure would have started so I knew of Digimon's existence but never looked into it until later in life.
I remember looking at a book of Digimon in first grade that my school happened to have and taking note of the Adventure partners' designs with Gomamon's sticking out to me and I remember seeing a Digimon episode on a portable TV while I was camping with my grandma where Togemon's silly design really stuck out to me. I also remember being at a flea market and seeing Impmon for the first time in plushie form and every detail about that plushie stuck in my mind until I later found out it was a digimon and instantly recognized it. There was also a time one of the Digimon movies was on a US channel called "Jetix" and my uncle explained to me that digimon evolutions were reversible and thinking that was such a good idea for the franchise to implement which is still an opinion I hold today. I think I also learned that day that digimon could be beat up so bad they go back to being an egg. I played a Savers flash game briefly at one point. I remember also buying the MetalPhantomon, GeoGreymon, Gaomon, DotGaomon figure pack and playing with them in the hospital as my grandpa was dying of lung cancer and yeah, that's it for early memories
However, my first time really being exposed to Digimon were the games Dawn and Dusk. I originally had Dusk but would later trade for my brother's Dawn when I realized I liked Coronamon's evolution line and Light Fang more which is a trade my brother agreed on. I actually remember mulling the night before buying it, uncertain if I wanted Dawn or Dusk but decided on Dusk as I liked nighttime more so it makes sense why I went back on the decision later as I started out on the fence. Those games were so weird to me. They were grindy and it seemed like getting a Mega was an obscene amount of effort. Who can jogress with what to get who also seemed super random like you needed to already in the know but there were just so many random and nonsensical jogresses and dead ends to evolution lines that forced you to find one to progress which I didn't like. I was also super confused on how the characters were species but the descriptions seemed to refer to a lot of them like they were individuals, and I remember being very confused on how I had Digieggs that hatch into Digimon but apparently I can use Digieggs to evolve digimon? Yeah, the localization of Digimental to Digiegg really threw me for a ride as I learned about evolution through "Digieggs" by reading the instruction manual.
My first time actually getting into Digimon and considering myself a fan was by being on an unrelated virtual pet site years after playing Dawn and Dusk. This site no longer exists but was my main forum website and one day there was a forum post on that site asking "What's your favorite Digimon? Mine is Plesiomon" followed by an image of a really pretty creature I now know as Plesiomon. I then Googled Plesiomon, found the fan wikis where I read its reference book entry, and started clicking links around jumping from one Digimon to the rest guided by evolution webs and the more I read, the more enthralled I was that the profiles reference each other and painted one really big picture and a very interesting world. I would then go on learning more and more until it became an obsession. When Pokemon went in a direction I found unfulfilling during X and Y, I dropped that franchise and filled that void with Digimon. So while I had a super spotty history with Digimon, it is that forum post that I credit for the event that made me a Digimon fan
