We take for granted now how much especially the defaults for Halo 1 rebuilt gamepad controls to a useful, reusable standard. It's really fun going back to Halo 1 and its tutorial of how its controls work and its menu full of optional entire layouts to sort of see the exact moment when game controls stopped being lousy and almost random from game to game. You can contrast with Halo Reach where most of the optional layouts are just gone and more people use the defaults and then say Halo Infinite where all the optional layouts are gone because the common ones moved into the platforms (and accessibility settings) and in some cases the gamepads themselves.

It remains an interesting reflection point in the history of 3D games. It's also why the Grim Fandango remaster turned out so well, now that controls have settled into their modern forms.

SCUMM games always had a "win" key for action sequences, and I remember it would sometimes be mentioned in the manual. (Remember when games came with those? I was one of the sorts of nerds that read them.) Off the top of my head I think it was Alt+G. My first many playthroughs I always used the win button for all the action sequences in Full Throttle. It made the game a lot better back on my original PC I played the game on where it would stutter in the action games and make them hard to win. I still sometimes think the game is better without the action sequences, even if I can normally win them now.

(As I recall even GrimE had a similar or the same combo key. A lot of the complaints about Monkey Combat in EMI I didn't have because after a couple attempts I recall just pushing the win button and moving on.)

Heh, I know what you mean. I enjoyed the action minigames and figuring out what to do, but some people found them frustrating.

Mostly, what I remember is the outstanding voice acting, and the most memorable intro ever.

Yeah, whenever I think of Maureen I think of two things: asphalt, and trouble...