Gaming franchises you wished you got on board with sooner

While it isn't a franchise that requires any knowledge from previous installments, I would've loved to have been invested in the Animal Crossing series prior to New Leaf. Always just saw it as a game for highly casual players- never expected to get sucked into it like I have.

The only other game that I can think of off the top of my head is Mass Effect, since I started with the second game (the original wasn't available for PS3 at the time). I didn't understand some of the references and missed call backs to previous characters, but I still enjoyed the game in spite of that.

Well, Pokemon has been around all my life since my family were fanatic's but i've never really had a proper interest in it, 'cos I thought it'd always be around. But then they stopped suddenly and we just stopped buying Pokemon stuff. :C

I wish I got into it at a waaaaay younger age, but only a couple of years ago did I really take a shine to it~ <3

I have four of these. The first being Zelda... I only really got into the series after Ocarina of Time 3D (although I had played Phantom Hourglass before). Since then though I've been back and played the majority of the games, the most recent being A Link to the Past.
Secondly is Metroid. Like Zelda, I only really got into it because of the 3DS (namely the Ambassador Programme and Metroid Fusion)... but I now own Metroid Prime Trilogy, so I'll let you decide what I think of the series.
Thirdly... Ace Attorney. I only became aware of this series because of the Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney cross-over that was announced in 2011. I now own every AA game and it's become one of my favourite series of all time...!
Finally, MegaMan. I tried out the 3DS Virtual Console version of the original MegaMan a while back, and I loved it. If I'd played it before the 3DS, I probably would own most of the spin-offs by now...!

Almost every series I'm in I got into late. Including, but not limited to:

Persona
The Tales Series
Harvest Moon
Elder Scrolls
Metroid

- The Legend of Zelda, due to my inner child not wanting to play platformer/adventure games get couldn't have you jump
- Mega Man, as the main games' difficulty would've been frustrating for me as a kid
- Metroid, because the complexity of switching weapons and the use of the speed boost scared me as a child

Final Fantasy. I hadn't started playing FF until the FF VII on the PS2. The game was a complete shock to me, but still fun. Mmm, Pokemon in a competitive aspect, I feel like I would be better if I started battling competitively when I was younger. Assassin's Creed, Bioshock and Halo and Fallout.

There are oh so many games that I would have liked to have gotten into at a younger age, but a lot of them are M-rated series that I was never allowed to play because my parents thought M-rated games were too violent. Halo and Half-Life being among those.

Well, Mass Effect and Skyrim for me. I have some old Game Informers laying around my house from the original Mass Effect release and Skyrim. I kept telling myself I would start them but put it off till now and my friends all have mixed feelings about both games while I'm still trying to chop through both Mass Effect and Skyrim.
Currently on ME3 and is Level 18 I Skyrim oh the shame wish I been had these games they are super amazing

One big one would be Mass Effect. The first of the three games I played was ME 2. A friend had introduced to the series, and once he helped me make a character I was hooked. Sometimes I wish I had played Mass Effect first, would have made playing through the first one so much more amazing, plus the first one was an amazing game itself, even if it's a litlle dated.

The Homeworld series... playing though the first one (published in 1999) and its amazing... a RTS with a unique system where EVERY mission matters as what you did in the first carries on to the following missions... of coarse this can also be terrible if you almost lose your entire fleet in one mission.