My HeroQuest story is probably similar to that of many: my friend's mother bought him a copy of the game when it was new in stores while we were in third or fourth grade. We devoured all of the original quests in short order with his mom playing as Zargon and me playing as Barbarian and Elf and him playing as Wizard and Dwarf.
I really, really wanted my own copy to play with a different group of friends as well who I knew would enjoy it, but my mother could not afford one, so I invented a rip-off called AdventurersAdventure.
It was nearly identical to HQ but also with overworlds. That other group of friends really enjoyed it but I finally convinced my mother to get me an actual copy of HQ and we played through all the base quests with me as Zargon. I also bought Keller's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord and we played through those. He bought the Elf and Barbarian Quest packs and we played through those. I always wondered why there weren't Dwarf and Wizard quest packs (and am now not surprised to learn that they were in development). I never knew about WoM or Frozen Horror and can't wait to play them!We designed many, many of our own quests (I created a whole quest pack devoted to the return of the witch queen, and a second one which I do not remember at all) and had so much fun.
One of those friends ended up buying Advanced HeroQuest, but I think we only played a few sessions before deciding we liked the original HeroQuest much better.
Then disaster hit...
When moving away for college, for some idiotic reason I decided to leave my copy of the game and the quest packs and the self-made quests with that first friend who was also a neighbor. He eventually "lost" all of them in the course of several bad life choices (he moved out of a place he was renting with co-workers or something and left half of his stuff behind).
So now I'm on a quest to reacquire the original game and the quest packs. I have a different group of friends now who have never played and are curious so I'm trying to make it happen, but as you know: used copies are super expensive on eBay and such these days. I might just end up printing out the board and cards and such and using other figures for the heroes and monsters.
TL;DR version: I had HeroQuest and two quest packs and a friend lost them and now, two decades later, I'm trying to buy them again and get back into it!
I'll take another look in my boxes again soon, though.