Remember coming across dragon ball in the mid 90s I think at like 7 am on saturdays. Found some dragon ball VHS tapes to rent at video connection/block buster and was HOOKED. I would be at school searching on netscape and finding summaries of episodes from a japanese site. Then found pictures of those cats going super saiyan and was excited as hell thinking it would eventually make it over to the states. Shit went quiet though until carton network/toonami picked it up.
Everybody was so into it. I was downloading the movies on LimeWire with the old-school ass subs lol. Was such a fan I had even ordered a PS1 device that plugged into the back of the system and set a spring on the inside of the system to swap a USA game out, and drop in an imported game. Fucking bought Dragon Ball Z Legends in Japanese and played that shit non stop with my brother and friends. Had even bought Dragon Ball GT Final Bout and got godly at fucking people up with the meteor system. Won a few local tournys lol. We were died hard as fuck.
I had a big homie who was a year or two older than me. He'd print out full colored pictures of the main characters super saiyan and had them all over his locker during our time in junior high and highschool. Dragon Ball was my gateway into anime and I'm so grateful. Shit I have a deaf guy at work who fucking loves Dragon Ball. I feel some kind of way knowing he won't be able to hear the screams they make lol. Thank you so much and rest well Mr. Toriyama