I experienced Star Wars for the first time by watching it on VHS at a friend's house. I would have been about 3 years old at the time. I remember being fascinated by the moment when the Jawas put a restraining bolt on Artoo and suck him up into the Sandcrawler. We watched that moment several times on slow motion and slow rewind.
I subsequently went to see the re-releases of the movies in cinemas. I remember seeing all three in a row at one cinema and I was almost on my way out of the cinema when the Emperor was killing Luke. I stood with my Mum at the door and only went back to sit down once it was clear Luke was going to be okay!
As a fan, I found that my enjoyment of the films in 1997 was impaired by my noticing changes all the time. I went a second time to each film to try and ignore the changes and just enjoy them, but it wasn't so easy. And I was certainly left with the conclusion that I would be fine as long as I could choose to watch the originals or the SEs. I knew that I didn't rate the SEs as highly as the OOT.
I can't be the only one who found the special effects in Star Wars convincing! Why does everyone have a problem with the Wolfman in the cantina?!