It must have been ´85 or ´86, a friend got the red box set (german translation) for birthday, two other friends made a dwarf and a cleric, so I made a wizard, named him Gregor, put my natural 17 on Intelligence because my DM advised me so, and started to play. It became my longest campaign (Mystara), running very frequently for about three years, and got my addicted to playing the wizard (or DM). We played until level somewhere beyond twenty, with our own baronies, castles, armies, ... Eventually our DM got tired and killed us all in a slaughter of a dungeon crawl (We had so much magic and resources, we prevailed far longer than he expected, and as a good DM he played with the rules, but he was fatally determined.