Have you ever waited to play a game that is the 2nd or 3rd or 4th in the franchise until after you've played the preceding games?

For instance, would you play Half Life 2 before playing Half Life 1? What about God of War? Metal Gear Solid?

What about Pikmin or Super Mario Bros?

Are there any games that you feel are unnecessary to do this for? I personally feel that Theif: Deadly Shadows did an excellent job of alluding to the previous games without feeling like you HAVE to have played them in order to understand what's gong on, but I still am interested to see what actually happened in them.

Are there any games that you feel only the last game or games in the series should be played? I personally love Super Smash Bros Brawl, but find Melee to have comparatively poor character balance, and the original Super Smash Bros to not have the game mechanics that made Melee and Brawl really shine.

EDIT: As a continuation of this point, what games do you feel SHOULD be played in order to get the full effect and enjoyment out of them?

Yep game stories dont matter to me as much it more about gameplay but if i am interested i might go back into the prequels

yea i have. i play half life 2 on the xbox, and never played half life 1. i play MGS3 before MGS2.

if its a really good game, even if i haven't played the prequel, its still worth my $ and time

Yes, very recently actually. I just played ToS 2, and I haven't played ToS 1 yet............although it's motivated me to try and find a copy of ToS1.

What this guy said.

lets see.....

Played Tales of Symphonia: DOTNW, never played the first
Resident Evil 4 before I played REmake
Metroid Prime 3, never played the other Primes (I know, kill me. Im waiting for the remakes)

Yes. For the most part that is what I do. I have made exceptions though.

-edit- (Meaning I don't play the sequel without playing 1-x first, for the most part) 

I usually don't play the sequel before the prequel, but on certain rare occasions I do. And in some cases (Lunar 1 & 2 especially), playing the sequel first completely kills the appeal of the prequel, mostly due to how much the system has improved between games.

I played my favourite game of all time, Suikoden II, without playing the predecessor first (and the stories are connected). In fact, it's what made me play the first.

But then I replayed 2 after beating the first and realized I had missed so many things. It's amazing that even before that it was my favourite game

Let's See

Sonic 2
Resident Evil 2
Final Fantasy 7 (not really a sequel oh well)
Super Mario Bros. 3 before 2 (but not before 1)
Super C (before Contra)

Thats All i can think of off the top of my head, but old games like that usually didn't need you to play the 1st because they had no story to speak of.