All they really need are Waluigi “Waa”s in time with normal alarm beeps.
You read that right. Coming in 2025, Nintendo brings you the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo. And it’s feature rich.
First, and most importantly, it allows you to wake up to sounds from some of your favorite recent games. Notably, as the video initially shows, Jump Up, Super Star! from Super Mario Odyssey. But don’t worry if you’re lazy and don’t wake up on the dot; Alarmo will add in sound effects from the game you’ve chosen for your alarm to annoy you awake.
As a matter of fact, those sound effects will actually coincide with your movements. Because, as one of the other major features, Alarmo actually has a sensor built in to track movement. Those sounds are going to get a lot more insistent as you continue to fail to get up. What’s more, Alarmo will stop automatically when you get out of bed, without any physical interaction with you.
You know, might want to recommend against the Splatoon 3 alarm if you live with a war vet and are a particularly heavy sleeper. Just throwing that one out there.
The sensor isn’t just for annoying you awake, though. Because the last major feature of Alarmo is that it tracks your sleep patterns. It keeps a record of how much you move while asleep that you can check at any time. It’ll even play sounds to help you go to sleep when you get into bed, themed to your chosen alarm. Similar to that, it also has hourly chimes; bet your grandfather clock doesn’t sound like a Zelda game, now does it?
Alarmo has 5 themes by default, with each having a choice of 7 “scenes”, or alarm varieties, each with their own music and sounds. And over time, by connecting to the internet, you can get more themes. The initial batch features:
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Pikmin 4
- Splatoon 3
- Ring Fit Adventure
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The video also teases updates for themes based on:
- MarioKart 8 Deluxe
- Animal Crossing
That said, you’re not just running out to your local Walmart to grab one. For a limited time, Alarmo is only available today for $99 through two avenues: the My Nintendo web store for paid Nintendo Online members, and the Nintendo World Store in New York. Only available while supplies last.
So how did people react to the news? Well, almost everyone honed in on the idea that if you really wanted to wake someone up (likely with a heart attack) you’d have a scene that plays the Guardian theme from Breath of the Wild and those lock on beeps, possibly followed by the laser firing.
It’s worth noting that Alarmo was actually leaked about half-a-month back due to an FCC filing, where it was known as CLO-001. Thanks to that, we know a few things not included in the video; primarily/, that it has no battery and is powered through USB-C.
We also know through an interview with the developers that Nintendo published today that they initially planned a reward system that they ultimately decided against using.
Akama: It’s always been our hope that people will continue to use Alarmo for a long time. With that in mind, we were also concerned that game-like elements might not be compatible. For example, if we were to create a system in which you receive a reward every time you wake up, it may motivate you to wake up as long as you’re still receiving the reward. But if we create that system, once the rewards stop, you may lose your motivation to wake up.
What’s worse, once you get used to that system, you might even start to think, “Well, if there’s no reward, then I don’t need to get up.” We concluded that it would be best to remove game-like elements to encourage users to continue using it for a long time. Also, there were comments from the development team like, “Let’s not give users more tasks to do.”
As for the general consensus, there are some worried that users might begin to associate the sounds with the negative experience of being woken up when you’d rather sleep. An issue well known to those that use their favorite songs and sound effects as alarms, notification sounds, and ringtones.
Regardless, Alarmo is an interesting package. Though, admittedly, I don’t have the dough to drop on a $99 alarm clock.
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