[IggleSniggle]

Epic post. I've always been a huge fan of pie menus, ever since I first encountered them in The Secret of Mana, and those were even a fairly inelegant version of them. I'm not sure they're better than linear menus for keyboard + mouse (emphasis on keyboard), but they seem like an obvious win for joysticks and for touch (which is really a lot like a joystick).

[terribleperson]

Pie menus present somewhat of a problem for keyboard, but they're excellent for mouse. Every button on the menu is the same very short distance from the initial click point, but it's difficult to click the wrong one because their effective size is very large, just like a button in the corner of the screen.

[IggleSniggle]

I played an arcade strategy game that used arrow keys to navigate through pie menus which I thought was a pretty interesting concept. It's akin to learning arcade "combos." The sequence eventually becomes muscle memory, but it's very self-revealing before then, too.

[terribleperson]

Mind sharing the name if you remember it? I imagine it had fixed-size pie menus. (size as in number of options)