Blue Shift was great. Funnily enough, I played Blue Shift before I playe d Half-Life. I have Blue-Shift to thank for my interest and skills in mapping today.
Nihilanth, because I thought it was the funniest character I'd seen in any game. (But the bastard is too big to have more than one in my maps!)
Forum posts
Do you mean title messages that display during the game? 
in my experience, using ambient_generics to make sounds like that have caused problems. Using the "funny name and locked sound" method is the easiest, though it took me a year to get it right.