Of all the hardware announcements we might have been expecting next from Nintendo, a new alarm clock was not one of them. But the Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo is very real, and will be available exclusively to Switch Online customers later this week.
Alarmo looks every bit the alarm clock you might imagine Nintendo would make, if you would have ever imagined Nintendo would make an alarm clock. Like something plucked straight from the nightstand of Mario himself, it’s a very on-brand shade of red, with a circular color screen and a large glowing dial on the top for control and snooze.
It’s the result of a joint project between two sides of the business—hardware developer Tetsuya Akama and games developer Yosuke Tamori—who came together to work on an in-house project, with a goal of supporting people during their sleep.
“It was only after a lot of technical trial and error and building many prototypes that we decided to focus on alarm clocks,” Tamori says.
Choose Your Character
Alarmo features 35 scenes inspired by five Nintendo games—Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, Pimkin 4, and Ring Fit Adventure—borrowing characters, objects, music, and sound effects from each of those gaming worlds to help stir you from your slumber. Simply choose your favorite game, pick a scene, set a time, and leave Alarmo to do its thing.
That’s all backed up with built-in motion sensor technology, which was the developers' research focus, and how Alarmo came to be.
“One of our in-house projects was to research motion sensor technology,” says Tamori. “As this sensor maintains privacy since it doesn’t use a camera, we had an idea for how it could be highly suitable for use in the bedroom, so we decided to kick off a new project to see what we could do with it.”
That means the things you see and hear from Alarmo will change as you move, allowing you to snooze your alarm with a gesture and stop it entirely by getting out of bed.
Nintendo says characters and interactions from your chosen game will get “more intense” the longer you stay in bed though, so there’s no getting away from getting up—but at least you’re rewarded with a “victory fanfare” for your efforts once you do. Gamifying sleep as an incentive to finally drag yourself out of bed? It could just work.
That’s not all though. The motion sensor is also able to track your movement in the night, to see if you had a restful or restless night, which is all stored in Alarmo’s Records feature. This won’t work if you share your bed with another person (or a pet), mind you, which might say something about the Alarmo’s target demographic.
Nintendo says more titles will be available via free updates in the future, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons already in the works.
Alarmo will cost $99.99 and is limited to Nintendo Switch Online customers in the US and Canada at launch, but Nintendo says it will be available to wider audiences early next year.
