I've always been curious seeing people have joined the game since 2012-13-14 (or early), in a years where the game has barely a strong community unlike today, therefore i'd like to know how did you guys figure out this game, for me it was some japanese vine compilation video on youtube and it has that one dude who played rockfeller street then started dance, the video is a bit viral tho, but yeah

It was late at night, I was doing overtime at my job and since my work was complete I started heading toward my home. I was pretty tired. On the way home I saw a bar and since I was tired I decided to enter. I sit down and ask for a drink. Near me there was a another person sitting beside me. We ordered the same drink and which start a conversation between us, going from drinks convo he started talking about games
The convo goes like that

Unknown: I like to play rhythm games in my free time.
Manish: I love games too. I also wanted to create a game someday
Unknown: I am a game developer, I am working on a rhythm game named Osu!. You should try
Manish: I will pass, since I don't have much time because of works and I also don't like rhythm games, it's late I gotta go home, ohh wait we didn't introduced ourself. My name is Manish, nice to meet you
Unknown: I forgot about introduction. My name is peppy, nice to meet you too
Manish: cya maybe we will meet again in future
Peppy: cya

After the long ass convo I leave the bar and start heading toward home, though.. The feeling in the area changed, I started to feel cold and like someone is following me. I thought I drink too much alcohol. I was scared I started walking faster and suddenly I hear something scary, ting ting ting ting... Ohh it was my phone, again I hear a footstep. I started sprinting toward my house and finally I reached it, the house feel wayy far compare to normal days. I took a bath and went to sleep, in my dream there was a unknown shadow which grabing my neck tightly and repeatedly saying, play the game play the game Or else you die or else you die. In the fear I installed osu and whenever I don't play I see the dream at night.

A friend of high school showed it to me

I played the game Gunz: The Duel and one of my friends on there showed osu!

osu! was everywhere back then lol, but i never really had the time to install it and play it

i joined a discord community server, and there, i got really inspired by other players who played osu!, so thats when i decided to install and play!!1!!

i kept finding freedom dive plays and the big black fcs and that convinced me to play osu

I just searched on google/bing [can't remember which one] "best rhythm game" and then I headed towards the download page and the artwork in the downloads page attracted me to the game. And then I hurriedly created my osu! account which in turn I misspelled rhythm, but still after checking I misspelled rhythm I had no regrets.

This YouTube video popped up in my YouTube's home screen and that was when I first recognized osu, tho I didn't jump in immediately. That was until my online friend at Instagram brought it up again and suggested me trying it out. I agreed. Chock-full of songs that I like, intuitive and fun overall. I got hooked up since then.

i found it through a mix of my online friends playing it on streams and videos from Kariyu

Went down the YouTube rabbit hole watching insane Beat Saber plays and came across this video of a replay knockout (I thought it was a realtime gamemode between fifty people--shows how much I knew back then). For a game I knew nothing about it had me on the edge of my seat the entire way.

Started watching more 50 replay knockouts, guessing who'd be the last person facing Danser. From then on I had an itch to join the game but keep in mind I'm 24 watching this, so I'd never thought I'd get good at it like you young folk who basically begin clicking circles inside the womb. Therefore I put it off to the side.

Few weeks later I start seeing more and more osu! videos in my YouTube feed. BTMC, Koifishu tornaments, bruhmasterL docs. Figured screw it why not see what all the fuss is about.

-

And here I am. A month ago I completed my first 100 pp play, just got the 6 star medal two days ago, and I'm currently practicing to qualify in a 6-digit team tourney. Not a top player of course, but it's been epic experiencing a level of improvement I never imagined possible in a game.

some youtuber named saberstrike

cousin showed it to me, although i knew about it a year prior

I got lost in the forest and then met two monks who taught me the art of playing video games starting with osu!

Without them, I would never have discovered this wonderful game that changed my life

I watched a couple of tokaku vids and then osu vids started to flood my youtube recommendations. Then I thought that maybe I'd actually give osu! a try.

r/place

some cat show on my youtube homepage, i click the video, and i accidentally click the circle

Via Angelsims play on Ata Euphoria. Looked insane so I decided to try Osu out at the time.

I looked up the game after my brother mentioned it while talking about it with his friends.

I was like 9 or 10, I'd always watch youtube videos then one day I stumbled upon cytus which got me hooked, (played it for like 2 months cuz I got bored). Years after I tried to play again and got really good which got me hooked into rhythm games so I also tried others like cytoid,cytus 2,arcaea,and phigros. When I got my own pc I tried osu cuz I saw how active the game is

My sister introduced me to osu! back in 2018 as her class friend played it and my sis got interested (I think?). She told me it was a rhythm game, much like a certain game I used to play (Piano Tiles 2, hard to call it a rhythm game tbh). So, I started playing it.
Though, my account and such wouldn't exist until 2020, since I only played offline back then, and I was re-introduced to it by a friend of mine in that year.