The Ring menu system was an innovative menu system. It was first made in 1969 with the PIXIE system. In 1986, Mike Gallaher and Don Hopkins together independently arrived at the concept of a context menu based on the angle to the origin where the exact angle and radius could be passed as parameters to a command, or the radius could be used to trigger a submenu. The Action RPG video game Secret of Mana popularized the menu system, featuring an innovative icon-based ring menu in 1993. Its ring meu system was adopted by later video games
For novice users, ring menus are easy because they are a self-revealing gestural interface: They show what you can do and direct you how to do it. By clicking and popping up a ring menu, looking at the labels, moving the pointer in the desired direction, then clicking to make a selection, users learn the menu and practice the gesture to "mark ahead" ("mouse ahead" in the case of a mouse, "wave ahead" in the case of a dataglove). With a little practice, it becomes quite easy to mark ahead even through nested ring menus.
For the expert, ring menus are more efficient. Because they might have built up the muscle memory for certain menu actions, and are able to select the option they want without looking the pop up selections. In some cases, only when used more slowly like a traditional menu, does a ring menu pop up on the screen, to reveal the available selections. Moreover, novices can gradually become experts when they practice the same ring menu selection for many times and start to remember the menu and the motion. As Jaron Lanier of VPL Research has remarked, "The mind may forget, but the body remembers." Ring menus take advantage of the body's ability to remember muscle motion and direction, even when the mind has forgotten the corresponding symbolic labels.
Ring menus are faster and more reliable to select from than linear menus, because selection depends on direction instead of distance. The circular menu slices are large in size and near the pointer for fast interaction. Experienced users use muscle memory without looking at the menu while selecting from it. Nested ring menus can efficiently offer many options, and some ring menus can pop up linear menus, and combine linear and radial items in the same menu. ring menus just like any popup menu are shown only when requested, resulting in less visual distraction and cognitive load than toolbars and menu bars that are always shown.
The ring menu system as noted above, is easier to navigate and more reliable to select than other menu types. I'm taking an example from the Paper Mario series. Take how The Thousand Year Door's Battle Menu navigation is compared to the latest entry, Color Splash.
The Thousand Year Door uses a ring menu system similar to Secret of Mana's, from what I've seen and felt, The Thousand Year Door's ring system is easy to navigate, practical and very reliable. Color Splash however uses a clunky card linear menu system, that from what I've used and read online, is clunky as heck.
As you can see the Ring menu made some games less clunky, however that does not mean that the Ring menu is perfect for everything. Ring menus are most suited for actions that have been laid out by humans, and have logical grouping choices. Linear menus are most suited for dynamic, large menus that have many possible options, without any logical grouping, since ring menus can only show a limited number of menu items.