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Gateway Series
A Gateway Series is a series that introduces a significant niche of viewers to a genre that is new to them, and that is a positive enough introduction for them to hunt down other examples of the genre.

Trope Namer: In the drug world, a gateway drug is a drug that entices you or makes it easier to try other drugs. This name is mostly used by anti-drug programs, so there is debate about whether gateway drugs are real. But gateway series, series that makes you start watching new genres you never used to watch, are definitely real.

If you don't grow too passionate about the genre after watching a Gateway Series, after a few years you'll still end up with a vast knowledge about it and maybe a big pile of DVDs. If you do become passionate, then your room may be devoted to your new addiction. It all depends on how strongly you embrace your new tastes.

Someone's personal Gateway Series will be granted immunity from criticism thanks to the Nostalgia Filter.

Gateway series often have some things in common, mostly anything that causes a good first impression, both from the series and the entire genre. Each genre has a certain pattern, so to enjoy it you have to grow accustomed to those unique quirks. Thus, many Gateway Series blend styles or cross genres together; you are attracted to the series by quirks you already have and so get used to the new ones that way. Thus, Japanese Anime that has Western-style storytelling makes for good gates.

Maturity level also matters. In genres with age ghettos, a Gateway Series will likely double as What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?? Or have many Parental Bonuses.

Deep, intricate storylines or massive loads of action are common, as well as being weird in a fun and upbeat way. Those things help you realize that this genre can have a lot of good and different stuff to offer.

Gateway Series must be good in some sense, and must not have much more squick than normally comes with the genre. Otherwise, you would be turned off.

Contrast It's Popular, Now It Sucks. Not to be confused with this. See also Tv Tropes As A Gateway Drug.

Examples:

  • The classifying of anything as being a 'gateway something' does not in any way imply that it is less good than the less accessible material it leads on to. All that we're saying is that for a lot of people, these examples lead on to discovering and enjoying other things. Its not a value judgement, just an observation of how fans tend to start from common points.

    open/close all folders 

    Anime 

    Comic Books 

    Film 
  • Star Wars was a gateway to science fiction for many people when it first came out.
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was many people's gateway to Wuxia, or Asian cinema in general.
    • Rashomon was among of the first Asian films to gain critical acclaim or widespread release in the United States, and was many people's (including many future filmmakers) first introduction to Japanese (and indeed, Asian) filming and story techniques and the works of Akira Kurosawa.
  • Batman Begins set a standard of believability in Comic Book movies that eclipsed all previous attempts. This was successfully recreated in the Iron Man film and the standard was set once again with The Dark Knight.
  • Casablanca or Citizen Kane for classic films
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 must have gotten plenty of people into B movies.
  • The 2007 Transformers movie got a lot of people into the franchise. It is currently enjoying success it hasn't had in nearly 25 years. The toys had original shipping numbers based on the previous line (Transformers Cybertron), only to find empty shelves for weeks while they scrambled to meet demands.
  • The myriad of Philip K. Dick adaptations (Scanner Darkly,Total Recall,Paycheck, Blade Runner, Minority Report) and also the William Gibson adaptation/basis of movies like Johnny Mnemonic or Strange Days as an introduction into sci-fi beyond laser beams and space ships.
  • While it was much less popular than Star Wars, and had much less of an effect overall, Children of Men apparently served as a gateway to science fiction. For some reason, it wasn't subjected to the Sci Fi Ghetto itself, and its lack of self-conscious "coolness" allowed it to stand as an example of science fiction in general rather than an example of cool action-style sci-fi like The Matrix or The Terminator.
  • The Scream series did a lot to introduce young people in The Nineties to all the older horror movies that it referenced/parodied, to the point where it's credited with singlehandedly reviving the genre after having been Deader than Disco for the better part of the decade.
    • And decades before that, late night showings of old Universal Horror movies by TV stations did the same for the baby boomers. To an extent, they still serve as great gateways for younger or more squeamish viewers, since the Hays Code meant that the violence and sex was often minimal.

    Literature 

    Live Action TV 
  • Doctor Who can be a gateway series for non-Brits to introduce them to British Telly, or British culture in general. They may then move on to Life on Mars or something similar. Generally anything shown on PBS stations.
  • Stargate SG-1 is an excellent show for getting people into sci-fi shows, with it involving modern day soldiers in a variety of settings and starting off with more of an action feel, before going deeper into the sci-fi.
  • Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger is a gateway series for those who entered Sentai fandom earlier than Gekiranger.
    • This is because Deka was the first Super Sentai series to be subbed in its entirety.
  • Your average western toku fan's story goes a little something like this: "Gee, I sure did like Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers when I was little! So wait, it's actually an adaptation of a Japanese show? I think I'll check it out- wow, this sure is a good show!" And it goes on from there.
  • A popular gateway series to Kamen Rider is Kamen Rider Den-O. Only Decade and W are like Den-O so it's not especially representative of Kamen Rider.
    • Meanwhile, Kamen Rider V3 can easily qualify as one to the various Showa-era series, due to being the only entry to get a legitimate R1 release.
  • If it weren't for Star Trek there probably wouldn't be half as many sci fi nerds as there are now. In fact, there probably wouldn't be as many people in the space industry.
  • Skins was also a gateway series to British Shows like Misfits and The Inbetweeners.
  • Iron Chef was a gateway series on two levels, one for the Cooking Show genre and two, for Japanese Game Shows in general.
  • Firefly can be this for those who don't know or didn't pay any attention to Joss Whedon, particularly those who were a little too young to be into Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its heyday.
  • Rescue911 has been this to Crime, Survival, and rescue shows. Not to mention, a couple people who watched the show in The Nineties were inspired in part by this show to become Police officers, firefighters, emergency dispatchers, and paramedics.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • If you're a wrestling fan under 30, with very few exceptions, you started out watching WWF or WCW. As well, chances are you still watch WWE.

    Music 
  • With the help of YouTube, Straight No Chaser and their humorous renditon of "The 12 Days of Christmas" make a nice gateway into a cappella groups such as the Clef Hangers.
    • Not to mention Rockapella's appearances on Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego, probably the first exposure many had to a cappella groups in the 90s.
    • Since Woodstock and through much of the 80's, Sha Na Na occupied the same position as gateway group to a cappella singing, sharing it with The Manhattan Transfer. Which group was your gateway primarily depended on your age and whether your preferred musical style was doo-wop rock-and-roll or swing/jazz.
    • In the 60's and early 70's it was The Swingle Singers.
  • The music composed for shows such as Doctor Who or Battlestar Galactica can be a gateway for more classical music and famous composers.
  • For many, Daft Punk have been a gateway into the world of House Electronic music.
    • Similarly, Aphex Twin is one of the most well-known electronica artists in the world, and is often the first one people listen to before exploring others.
  • Green Day, Nirvana, AgainstMe! and NOFX are all punk bands who, though derided for going "mainstream" often act as Gateways to real underground and DIY punk rock.
  • Some of the more mainstream nu-metal bands like Linkin Park, Slipknot and KoRn, while not particularly heavy, have served as good Gateways to much heavier and varied subgenres of the heavy metal musical umbrella.
  • Pendulum is this for drum & bass.
  • The Prodigy brought an audience of alties in The Nineties to electronic dance music in general, thanks to being just harsh enough to appeal to them while maintaining their electronic roots.
  • Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War's usage of Hispanic-styled music has led many to look into the style.
  • Enya serves a gateway to both Celtic music and New Age music
  • Nirvana, and to a lesser extent Pearl Jam, serve as a gateway to grunge at first, and then to alternative music in general. Sometimes this also leads to non-mainstream music of other genres in general.
  • Joy Division often serves as a gateway to all manner of 70s and 80s punk, post-punk and goth bands.
  • Pink Floyd could be this for Progressive Rock.
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers are a gateway into funk for many people.
  • Bob Marley&The Wailers are the usual gateway into reggae and dub. Also, they've covered many songs from the mento, calypso, soul, doo wop, funk and African genres which means that hearing the originals can often attract people to those genres as well.
  • The Clash are a gateway into many genres such as punk, rock and roll, reggae, dub, rap, dance and ambient.
  • Jamiroquai's early work in the acid jazz style is a gateway into latin jazz.
  • Many rap musicians who sample from groove and jazz records find this, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Grand Puba, Digable Planets and A Tribe Called Quest for instance all sample from Funk and Jazz records which often leads to people finding the origins of the samples.
  • Japan (the band) and their solo work are known for introducing people to piano music such as Erik Satie as well as Japanese music such as Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sylvian's solo work also is a gateway into the ambient and new age genres.
  • Outside of Japan, FLCL could be considered a gateway series for the music of The Pillows, and Japanese alternative and indie rock music as a whole.
  • Due to the band's brief American pop radio success in the mid-2000's, Modest Mouse were a gateway band into the world of indie rock for many future fans of the genre.

    New Media 

    Software 
  • Mandriva Linux and Ubuntu are meant to be easy-to-set-up, easy-to-use gateways into the world of Linux, as reflected in Ubuntu's slogan, "Linux for human beings", and with people often switching to more complex distros such as Red Hat, Fedora or openSUSE, and some of them later graduating to technical distros such as Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, or even leaving Linux and switching to BSD or OpenSolaris.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Dungeons And Dragons Fourth Edition in particular has been rather successful at being friendly to new players.
    • New editions of D&D in general seem to do this. Much the same thing happened when 3rd Edition came out, and the gaming scene in general saw a big boost in the wake of the open-content d20 System.
      • With a few exceptions; Jonny-Come-Latelies joining at the height of 3.5 (Or now since 4th edition groups are rather rare) would probably find themselves swarmed with dozens upon dozens (if not even a hundred or more) of the various kinds of books, including but not limited to the player's handbook, monster manual, magical items, expansion books, class-detail books (Like Complete Divine), update books, and more.
    • Has also been used negatively by gamers in reference to D&D. Some gamers, for instance, feel that D&D is a shallower and less "worthy" part of the tabletop gaming industry and that it's so popular only because it's so easy to get into.
  • Vampire The Masquerade of the Old World of Darkness has been a more recent gateway game.
    • Particularly its simplicity compared to D&D and its modern horror setting has meant that its attractive to a lot of people who otherwise might not be interested in role playing. It also is pretty much focused on letting the players be anti-heros (or outright bad guys) which is definitely more attractive to the angsty teens.
  • Warhammer 40,000 is often a gateway to Tabletop Games as a whole. You start with 40k after coming across it as a teen, then after a few years you might move along and start playing spin-off game or even Warhammer Fantasy. If you play at a multi-gaming club, you'll probably end up at the very least being interested in those systems as well and there's no telling just how many you might get into.
  • Board games such as HeroQuest, or the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books often serve as a gateway to Tabletop RPG gaming.
  • Tunnels And Trolls was explicitly designed as a simpler, easier-to-play clone of D&D, in an attempt to bring in new gamers. It never did achieve the popularity of D&D, but there is a sizable group of tabletop gamers that cut their teeth on T&T.
  • Western Computer RPGs
  • The Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy books were a gateway for many roleplayers of the 80s.
  • The Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game card game led eventually to Magic: The Gathering for lots of players. Helped by the fact that a lot of sanctioned tournaments of the former shared venues with tournaments for the latter. Also, the huge media presence (straddling many years) and child-friendly image of both Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh practically guarantees that these will be the first CC Gs people get into.
    • And, in turn, a number of Magic pros who become accustomed to making high-stakes probabilistic decisions end up transitioning to poker (most notably David Williams).
  • The Dark Eye is the Gateway system in German-speaking countries, despite beeing the deepest system around.

    Theater 

    Video Games 
  • After The Great Video Game Crash of 1983, people thought gaming was dead... but then enters Super Mario Bros. bundled with the NES...
  • Final Fantasy VII was a gateway RPG for a lot of players — to the detriment of the genre, some might argue. And it doubled as a bit of a gateway introduction to anime as well.
    • It was also a gateway to PlayStation games in general.
    • The Final Fantasy series as a whole can be considered a gateway to RPGs.
    • Super Mario RPG is a a very good introductory RPG that's actually an RPG.
  • The Baldur's Gate series.
  • The Elder Scrolls.
  • Not only can Pokémon} count as a gateway to anime, it's also a gateway to the Mons genre and to some extent to RPGs in general.
  • Many games designed by Nintendo for the DS and Wii were intended to be gateway videogames for people who never tried them before — like Wii Sports, Nintendogs, Elite Beat Agents, and so on.
    • Nintendo has the reputation of being the video game company that makes games to introduce people to videogames who never played them before, something that the company opens states being their goal. Of couse, some people don't say it like that.
    • In fact, let's just say Casual Games in general, though there can also be Gateway Games for certain types of Casual Games as well (e.g. Diner Dash for time management games).
  • The Tony Hawk games are a two-way gateway — they've gotten a lot of skaters into gaming, but it's when they get gamers into skateboarding that Hilarity Ensues.
  • The Super Smash Bros.. series has a wide variety of Nintendo characters, and some players might become more interested in the individual series if they see a character they'd never heard of before. The appearance of Marth and Roy in Melee for example, led to the introduction of the Fire Emblem series to the US.
    • Brawl even has demos of several of the characters' starring games.
  • A variation of this trope: a lot of people become regular readers of GameFAQs after getting stuck in Guide Dang It moments.
  • Long-time series such as Castlevania — espeically Symphony of the Night tend to be gateways for modern players into the world of retro gaming, especially those curious about references to characters from previous games.
  • "People who don't like video games like Myst."
  • World of Warcraft is the most infamously addictive MMORPG out there nowadays, but those who have played it and quit often try to seek out other MMO's afterward.
  • Halo for Multi-player FPS. (Arguably before then, it was Doom) Being a launch title for the Xbox, many gamers who did not play FPSs before played it. It's argued that Halo was the killer app that allowed the Xbox to compete in its early days against the wildly successful Playstation 2. So that's gotta count for something.
  • Thief, a stealth simulator, was marketed as a big new twist on the overinflated First-Person Shooter genre. It got quite a few action gamers interested in stealth games.
  • Metal Gear Solid served an almost identical function to Thief on an entirely different system. Also, due to its slow-paced gameplay, its focus on storytelling and the ability of the player to pause the action to talk to the other characters about trivial things, it also makes a great gateway series for people raised on JRPGs trying to break into Action Games.
  • If you stick around the Dance Dance Revolution community long enough, you may come to try out other Rhythm Games — up until the release of Guitar Hero, this would be things like beatmania IIDX and Dance ManiaX.
    • Although for a lot of people it now works the other way around, with Guitar Hero or Rock Band being the gateway game that leads them to discover Dance Dance Revolution.
      • This can also work across media — Guitar Hero and Rock Band inspire people to buy and get into music from the games.
      • These two games can also turn people on to real instruments. Hilarity Ensues when they realize a real guitar's nothing like the plastic controller.
    • Of course, neither of these games would have been possible if Parappa The Rapper hadn't opened up the world of rhythm gaming to start.
  • Street Fighter does this for 2D fighting games. The series is relatively user friendly and easy to pick up and play, leading many in more complicated games like Guilty Gear.
  • Play one addictive puzzle game, and you're bound to wind up hunting for more. Peggle is a good example.
    • Tetris for older tropers.
  • Many gamers' first Real Time Strategy game was Warcraft II, and for good reason, too. The graphics are nice to look at, the mechanics are fairly simple compared to other RTS games, and most importantly, it's a lot of fun (including against your friends, even if they do kick your butt in 95% of the games you play with them).
    • If your first RTS wasn't Warcraft II, then it was probably Starcraft.
      • Or you may predate Warcraft II and have actually played Warcraft: Orcs & Humans for your first RTS.
      • Someone forgot Command & Conquer — Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert
      • Command & Conquer? You forgot Dune II.
      • Dune II may have started the genre, but it certainly was no Gateway Series. Warcraft II was indeed the first game of the genre that became mainstream (though, as mentioned above, those who missed it simply found Starcraft first).
      • All these games can be considered Gateway Series depending on your age. Westwood Studio games like Dune II and the Command & Conquer series were extremely popular at the time. Blizzard Entertainment only became a clear leader when they released Starcraft.
  • The Super Robot Wars series can potentially be a good Gateway Series for many Giant Robot Anime, considering that the plot for each game basically takes the plot of every series involved in the Massive Multiplayer Crossover and shoves them all together.
  • Nintendo games almost always serve this trope, but this console generation aiming for this has basically become their entire marketing strategy. The self-proclaimed "hardcore" gamers may lament that women and old people are getting in on their hobby, but it's hard to fault Nintendo when they're clearly getting results — games and systems, Nintendo and otherwise, are selling better than they ever have even in the economic recession.
  • The Humongous Entertainment games were designed to be like this.
  • Although Rogue was, by definition, the first Roguelike, many fans of the genre get their start with the Trope Codifier, NetHack, leading into more difficult games like Angband, and a greater acceptance for ASCII games in general. It's probably not a stretch to say that Dwarf Fortress wouldn't exist if it weren't for NetHack.
    • It's kind of a stretch; Dwarf Fortress is only an ASCII game as a temporary convenience. If it weren't for exposure of Roguelikes, toady probably would have spent a lot of his development time struggling with a GUI.
    • POWDER and Shiren the Wanderer are good gateway roguelikes for those discouraged by the complexity (and ASCII-ness) of NetHack and company.
  • Touhou has introduced many a gamer to the wonderful world of Bullet Hell shmups.
  • Although two games predate it (in America, at least), Tales of Symphonia was the Gateway Series to Tales Series for a lot of Western fans. It being one of the better RPGs on the GameCube meant that it drew a lot of attention from people who had previously dismissed the previous games in the series. Also, Tales of the Abyss to an extent, purely because it was for the PS2.
  • Quite a few people have been introduced to either the First-Person Shooter genre, PC gaming, or both by way of Team Fortress 2.
  • Sakevisual, the artist of RE Alistair, wants her game to become a gateway series for fans who don't yet know about otome games.
  • Interactive Fiction started the Adventure Game genre, but many felt it to be too inaccessible. The move to graphic adventures was fairly rapid, but despite some awesome games like King's Quest and Maniac Mansion they remained a niche genre for several years. Then LucasArts (at the time still a strict part of Lucasfilm) went and made a game called Loom, one of the most accessible adventure games ever created. This created a veritable explosion in the PC adventure game market, which ended almost a decade later. And for those who were not yet fully convinced, Lucas Arts followed the left punch with the right soon thereafter, giving us the most famous PC Adventure Game ever created, The Secret of Monkey Island.
  • Persona 3 and Persona 4 are good start for those interested in the Shin Megami Tensei series, seeing how they're generally considered the most accessible of SMT games. In fact, the original Persona was designed to be a more easier SMT.
  • How has everybody missed The Sims? With its broad market appeal it was many people's gateway to videogaming, period.

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