Hmm. I don't remember it that well. At that time I was always trying to find new kinds of music, and I remember that the eerie soundtrack Fallout 2 made an impression on me. Eventually I found the great great site sleepbot.com and started trying to get my hands on some of the artists' albums. Steve Roach was the one I listened to first, too. :)

I think I developed my like for ambient by playing games from the Final Fantasy series. I developed my musical taste fairly late, a year or two into high school, and didn't really listen to much music before that (first whole album I listened to was Green Day's "Insomniac", still a favorite). The music from Final Fantasy was generally very unobtrusive, and wholly instrumental (being on 8- and 16-bit systems originally, it didn't have much choice!) I also like to have music that I can listen to without being distracted by vocals (as I easily am). I discovered Aphex Twin about two years ago (Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is excellent) and most recently I've began listening to Air.

in 1996 (i was 12/13 years old) i had a magazine from philips that had an article that described all of the electronic music types. don't know why but i was very interested in ambient. i think it seemed the coolest to me. i went to a cd store and listened to a cd from the orb and thought that was a bunch of crap. so i can't exactly recall when i really got into it. i think orbital made a bridge from techno to ambient to me. i was (and still am) a huge fan of orbital and became more and more fan of that sort of elektronic bands. i went back to the cd store, bought that cd from the orb (live 93) and now i love that one. although selected ambient works 1 from aphex twin was my first ambient cd (because that Philips Magazine recommended that one)

maybe also that trainspotting scene, don't know that. i do know that that song (deep blue day from brian eno) is my favorite ambient song together with the orb - blue room (ambient mix)

I used to work in a hiphop bar (Old school hiphop stuff mostly, none of this commercial/media-influenced eminem/50 Cent/'bitch yo nigga' crap) - but thursday nights was 'chill out' nights. It played mostly stuff like Massive Attack, Morcheeba, that kind of triphop thing. That's how I got into triphop, (DJ Shadow now being my favourite artist)...

Then one night I opened up the bar on the thursday, and I got to decide what kinda music to put on. I started off by finding out a CD of /reeally/ ambient stuff. One of these less-commercial CD's that didn't have Moby and that on... Which although are good, unfortunately means that every chillout CD is the same ;)

But yeah, it had stuff like "Herbalism - Run Away" and "The Pathfinder - Choices" Which are 2 of my most favourite ambient musics...
Since /then/ I've really been into it.
Most recently I've been checking out a couple of stuffage by 'Paul Mounsey' - He's got a track called 'North' on the 'Come To Scotland' adverts, if anyone in the UK has seen them. Tis some good shit

But I'm going to stop typing, because I'm babbling.

In middle 90-s when I was 13-14 year old and barely had any idea about the genres and all that classification stuff, I was enjoying several Enigma tracks I occasionaly downloaded. Actually, I even didnt know the song titles :) Lately, as my mind grew up - it's nice to look back, heh - I quickly became acquanted with the music world structure, I got all Enigma albums, and I started to look for other new age music. I discovered Delerium, Era, Mike Oldfield...

I couldn't find anything really good on new age stream, and I turned to neighbour genre - ambient. Actually, I didn't met anything in ambient too that would excite me the same way as Enigma did. I do occasionaly listen to Christofer Franke, he's damn good, also some other titles, for instance Ardor, Klaus Schulze, but not that often.

I know, that's a bit off-topic, but I just wanted to describe the further evolution of my taste when it comes to electronic music :) At the age of 21 I really loved club music scene, Paul Oakenfold and similar stuff. Not silly boom-boom music, but club mixes with nice melody, rich electronic samples and dance rhythm. Tracks like Southern Sun, Hypnotized are very, very good. Club music is also perfect to listen when driving, doesn't let the mind relax.

i prefer the darker ambient stuff.

raison d'être, lustmord, lull, melek-tha, etc...
i suppose just from a bit of browsing around is how i found it.

For me (and not unlike some others apparently!) I think there were two notable influences in my mid-late teens, a Jean Michel Jarre album my father palmed off on me, and an Enigma track I heard in HMV which prompted me to buy all their albums. But I should also blame my father himself (who as a 'part-time' musician released a number of ambient electronica albums with a collaborator, as 'Aqueous').

As I hit my twenties I got distracted by slightly more dance-orientated groups like FSOL and Jam and Spoon (which also lead to my other main interest - House and Downtempo) but afterwards I caught the whole chillout thing (Café del Mar, Claude Challe, et al).

My main exploration into ambient, unlike other genres, has been thanks to the internet, and led to Michael Brook, JFC, Nor Elle, Detroit Escalator Co, Craig Armstrong, Reinhard Voight... I do have some Tangerine Dream and Eno but these are filed under New Age rather than Ambient [Electronica/Techno] along with JMJ and Enigma, as with time I realised the distinctions! I'm also a big fan of those 'Euphoria' ambient remixes of dance tracks.

My most recent Ambient purchase was Susumu Yokota's Sakura (although actually only half is Ambient fare).

It was Brian Eno of course. I bought Before and After Science, and the B side of the LP (yes I bought it when it came out in 1978. I am THAT old) was the start of pop ambient (as oppossed to Satie, Stockhausen, Cage and the other more classically oriented ambient composers). From there it quickly went backward to Fripp & Eno (try Evening Star) and then Harold Budd, Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh and the wonderful Australian band Not Drowning, Waving. Nowadays it's Sigur Ros, Moby, Banco de Gaia (which is more World), Aphex and the other more IDM related music. Fun journey and the end's not in sight.

believe it or not i actually grew up in the same town as richard james (aphex twin) so it was kind of inevitable i guess!

Cornwall has had its fair share of pioneers: richard along with luke vibert, mike paradinas, tom middleton etc.

safesurfer said it best :D
various psychedelic artists acquainted me with the ambient genre through their slower/trippier tracks. even though i adore the music i mostly listen to compillations and don't pay much attention to artist names =)

Jon hassell/brian enos fourth world was what got me into ambient.

I downloaded every song ever by Boards of Canada and my love has only grown from there. Now I'm also really into orchestral stuff, especially movie scores and such >:D