Of all the Hardware announcements we might have expected next from Nintendo, a new alarm clock was not one of them. But he Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarm is very real and will be available exclusively to Switch Online customers later this week.
Alarm Clock looks exactly like the alarm clock you might imagine Nintendo would make, if you’d ever imagined Nintendo would make an alarm clock. Like something straight out of Mario’s own nightstand, it’s a very on-brand shade of red, with a circular color screen and a large glowing dial on top for control and repeat.
It is the result of a joint project between two parts of the business: hardware developer Tetsuya Akama and game developer Yosuke Tamori, who came together to work on an internal project, with the aim of helping people while they sleep.
“Only after a lot of technical trial and error and building many prototypes did we decide to focus on alarm clocks,” says Tamori.
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. those game worlds to help wake you up from your slumber. Simply choose your favorite game, choose a scene, set a time and let Alarm do its thing.
All of that is backed by built-in motion sensor technology, which was the developers’ research focus and how Alarmo came about.
“One of our internal projects was researching motion sensor technology,” says Tamori. “As this sensor maintains privacy by not using a camera, we had an idea of how it could be very suitable for use in the bedroom, so we decided to start a new project to see what we could do with it.”