This Is No Cause For Alarmo! (Thoughts on Nintendo Alarmo)

     You've heard the story before a million times. Nintendo, one of the top video game companies in terms of creativity and quality, is going to announce a new piece of hardware soon. Naturally, people are foaming at the mouth to get even the slightest bit of information about the release date, price, games, or even just the name of the newest console. The CEO of the company stated months ago that the successor to the Switch would be announced at some point this fiscal year, meaning that it will be sometime before the end of March 2025. September was full of buzz that it would finally happen, we would be getting information any day now... October begins, and then Nintendo pulls one of the most "Nintendo" moves that it has ever pulled. They put out a trailer for new hardware... but it's not a system, it's a high-tech alarm clock. "Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo" was announced out of nowhere last week, and I really just wanted to take some time to talk about this little device while we're having a lighter week for news. It's time to wake up from your previous assumptions about alarm clocks, we're entering the next era of humanity here.

Maybe it's worth it just to see the characters running around on the front!

Get up and go!

    The Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo's trailer released to a whole lot of head scratching and confusion. I'll be honest, when I saw the trailer, I thought it was an April Fool's joke, but then I remembered that it was October, and continued watching. The Alarmo is essentially an alarm clock with a motion sensor built into it, which sounds a little bit creepy, but at least it's not an actual camera like the Xbox Kinect. The alarm goes off at the set time, as you would expect, using music from one of several "scenes" from different games. Along with the music, it makes noises also from the game that you select whenever you move, supposedly to encourage you to move around and wake up. Characters will come in and say things to encourage you further, such as Princess Peach, then leave eventually, and based on how long you take to get out of bed, the sound effects and music will get more and more intense, eventually leading you to encounters with more intense characters from whatever game you chose, such as Bowser. Once you get out of bed, however, the alarm will turn off with a brief fanfare. You don't have to make this part of it, you can also set the Alarmo to "Gentle Mode" which will take away the growing intensity of the alarm in its regular operation, or "Steady Mode." There are some other features, it'll measure your sleep patterns (which is one of the main reasons for the motion sensor), you can set up different chimes for different times of day, and have soundscapes based on different worlds. At launch, they have five different games that you can choose the theme from, being Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 4, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Ring Fit Adventure, and Splatoon 3, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons coming soon as free updates, leading to speculation on what else could be coming down the pipeline. I have to imagine that having Animal Crossing, a game that already has hourly specific tracks for every day, is a perfect fit for the aforementioned soundscapes feature. This device is such a fun idea, but I'm not sure how I would feel about actually purchasing it for a few reasons.

    To begin with, I never have too hard of a time waking up in the morning, so I don't know how much worth I would get out of it, especially since $100 is a bit steep for an alarm clock. The concept of waking up to Nintendo music sounds really fun, but it could also be detrimental for many reasons. I had a ringtone that I thought was really cool, and so I set it as my alarm when I was in High School, and after years of waking up to that tone at 6 a.m., I got to the point where I couldn't listen to it anymore, if I heard it even in a different context, it would almost make me twitch slightly. I can't have that happening to a song as amazing as "Jump Up, Super Star!" for obvious reasons. That portion of the game is so fun and uplifting, and so much of it is tied to the song that Pauline sings there, I would be really sad if I had a bad reaction to it after using Alarmo for too long. It does come with the option of just using a button instead of the motion sensor feature to turn the alarm off, but at that point, you may be better off with a slightly less expensive alarm clock. I would really like to try out Alarmo sometime, but as far as I'm aware, purchases are non refundable from the My Nintendo store, which is the only place you can purchase this cool piece of tech. I'll have to check out reviews from people who have actually used it so far, but I can't imagine enjoying it as much as the people in the commercial. Obviously, that's the point of the commercial, to make people want to buy your product, but I just don't buy how everyone reacts to this thing from the ad.

    This seems like a cool idea, and one that makes sense from Nintendo, a company with a long history of doing the least expected things. I really hope that it does well. Apparently it's already sold out in Japan, so at the very least, it's doing well in Nintendo's home turf! I think it's clear from this continued innovation from one of my favorite game companies that they're certainly not sleeping on the job!

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! How do you feel about the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo? I'm just curious to see what the general interest in this product is, even outside of the gaming community. Super Mario Party Jamboree is coming out this week (and will be out by the time you're reading this), but I don't have any thoughts on that one just yet, obviously I may write about it once I've played it, we'll have to see! Thanks so much for your support, and I hope you'll have a great week! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed sleep enthusiast, and I'll talk to you again soon!