Thwaite

One missile takes out two

Thwaite is a video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System in which the player must defend a cute little village from incoming missiles using missiles.

The ROM is freeware, available from the developer's web site.

Tropes used in Thwaite include:

• Aerith and Bob: NPCs like Tilda, Meg, and Justin next to Gnivad, Isca, and Briar.
• Alertness Blink: The ! over a house that's about to be destroyed, with accompanying Scare Chord.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: If ten houses are already present when morning comes, another house is not built.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: In single-player, the player can fire from either of two missile silos with the two buttons on a controller or mouse. In 2-player, each player has his own cursor and can fire from one of the silos.
• Critical Existence Failure: Even if all ten villagers have to crowd into a single house, the game goes on.
• Crowd Panic: Normally, the villagers inside a house that's threatened (see "Alertness Blink" above) head for another house. This happens in the faster levels where almost every house is threatened.
• Destructible Projectiles: The goal is to protect the village by destroying incoming ballistic missiles.
• Double Tap: The best option when dealing with a balloon or MIRV that just split into three missiles is to destroy two with one of your missiles and the third with another.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: The ending for a No Damage Run is not canon.
• Dummied Out: The cutscenes were originally supposed to have characters walking around. Graphics for this are still present in the tile sheet.
• Every Ten Thousand Points: One destroyed house is rebuilt after each day that the player survives.
• Exposition Break: Before a 1- or 2-player game begins, a short, skippable cutscene is shown explaining the game's object. During the game, each five waves represent one early morning, and after them, there's a short dialogue during the day.
• Game Over: If all ten houses are destroyed, or both missile silos are destroyed, the game ends.
• General Gaming Gamepads: In addition to a standard NES controller, the game accepts a Super NES Mouse that is plugged through a Super NES to NES controller adapter or into a "famiclone" console with Super NES controller ports.
• Gimmick Level: The levels with unusually fast missiles to test reaction time and the levels with all splitty things (balloons and MIRVs).
• Hint System: a two-line hint is displayed for the first five seconds of early levels.
• Hold the Line: Each round has a specific number of enemy missiles, and the round ends once all those have spawned and either been destroyed or destroyed something.
• Macross Missile Massacre: What the player must destroy.
• Mr. Exposition: In the opening cut scene, Pino instructs Milo and Staisy on how to operate the fireworks as a missile defense system.
• Multiple Endings: The culprit is never discovered if no buildings ever get blown up.
• My Nayme Is: Player 2's character is named Staisy.
• No Fair Cheating: The No Damage Run ending breaks the fourth wall to thank the player for performing a tool-assisted superplay, assuming that no player can accomplish this Nintendo Hard feat legitimately.
• No Pronunciation Guide: One of the NPCs is named Gnivad, and the manual doesn't give any hints on how to pronounce this.
• Not a Game: In a No Damage Run in progress, one of the villagers thinks the action is just an elaborate fireworks show, and another has a hard time convincing him otherwise.
• Old Format, New Work: Not only was this game made for NES, but it was also on the smallest widely used memory size for NES cartridges (24 KiB).
• One-Hit Polykill: Blowing up multiple missiles is essential especially in the fifth round of each morning, where the enemy has more ammo than you.
• Recursive Ammo: MIRV missiles and balloons.
• Scoring Points: Played with. Blowing up incoming missiles scores no points; conserving ammo and keeping houses protected at the end of each round does, as the Score Screen after each round explains. Because of this, there is only one score even in co-op.
• Shout-Out: The game's aesthetics and ending recall Animal Crossing series.
  • Balloons carrying missiles resemble those that carried presents in Animal Crossing.
  • The Alertness Blink references Metal Gear series.
  • One of the cut scenes in the No Damage Run track quotes lines from the Engrish intro to Zero Wing.
  • The Canon Ending references an Easter Egg shared by Mario Paint, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and Animal Crossing.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The game's peaceful, subdued soundtrack sounds like tunes that might be played in a laid-back social sim. It doesn't fit with the frantic blowing-things-up action.
• Standard Snippet: After each round, a snippet of "Westminster Quarters" plays.
• Stuff Blowing Up
• Sugar Apocalypse
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The music for 2 AM is a parody of the music for 2 AM in Wild World, showing that song's own similarity to the second movement of Pathetique by Ludwig Van Beethoven.
  • 5 AM is the 5 AM music in Animal Crossing for GameCube recreated with cut-up pieces of the third movement of Pathetique.
• Unstable Equilibrium: After a missile silo is blown up, it's out of commission for the remainder of that round and until either sunrise or the player completes a round without a single building being destroyed. At this point, the player has fewer missiles to work with, and one strategy is to ignore half the buildings.