111. Gargoyles
Gargoyles
Sega Genesis
Buena Vista Interactive
1995
This game is noteworthy for one thing, and that thing is certainly not the gameplay. The gameplay is, well, bad. However, if you are a fan of the show, this game rates a footnote in the Gargoyles lore for introducing the Eye of Odin as a Gargoylian macguffin.
Although, to be entirely clear, the actual eye of Odin already existed as a mythological macguffin. The folks at Buena Vista Interactive didn’t say to themselves “Hey, there should be this goddy guy named Odin who can be an eyeball shy of a set.” That idea totally already existed. It was made up by a dude probably named Erik Erikson, or possibly Olaf McViking. I’m not sure on the specifics. The point is the guys making this game had the idea that this ocular stray could be a thing that got mentioned in their video game.
In what was a pretty silly act of cross-promotion, this macguffin not only got incorporated to Gargoyles cannon proper, but was eventually revealed to be one of the Three Supermacguffins of the Archmage. This is a franchise with a lot of macguffins.
The best part of all this macguffinry is that the Gargoyle clan had a big storage closet in which they kept all their inactive plot devices. Mixed in with the flashlights and the vacuum cleaner, not only did they dump some of the most powerful magical artifacts in the world, they also stashed a comatose cyborg frankenstein gargoyle. I really appreciate that sort of verisimilitude.
Originally published at The Triangle. You can comment here or there.