Nintendo surprised the world with the company’s strangest product announcements in a decade. Alarmo is a Nintendo-branded alarm clock that uses familiar sounds and songs from the legendary developer’s library of classics. And while Alarmo isn’t the Switch successor most of the gaming world has been eagerly awaiting, the newest addition to Nintendo’s family of hardware was seemingly created with all the same outside-the-box charm its products are known for.
Alarmo isn’t just a functional alarm clock like the ones on most people’s nightstands. Alarmo has radio wave motion sensors to make getting out of bed in the morning totally interactive. As the alarm rings (with the user’s track of choice), it detects the user stirring in bed. As they move, sound effects like the chime of Mario collecting coins or the firing of a Splatoon squirtgun, play more frequently.
The clock automatically notices when you’re up and out of bed and winds down with a celebratory ding. On the flip side, the longer the user takes to get out of bed, the more intense the alarm will become. In addition to its alarm features, Alarmo can track sleeping habits such as movements, play “sleepy sounds” that help you doze off, and hourly chimes.
Sound effects are taken from The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Ring Fit Adventure, Pikmin 4, and the aforementioned Splatoon 3 and Super Mario Odyssey. Nintendo also confirmed that users will be able to download new sound effects.
Nintendo’s foray into sleep tech is a pretty novel idea considering almost every device with a screen has an alarm functionality. It’s a device that will likely appeal to Nintendo superfans. But considering how popular the Switch is even in its final days, that probably won’t be an issue.
Nintendo revealed more about how the device was conceptualized in a series of interviews with Alarmo’s creators Tetsuya Akama and Yosuke Tamori. Akama is a software developer who’s worked on Splatoon and Nintendo Labo. Tamori is a member of Nintendo’s Technology Development Department and helped develop the Joy-Con grip and the Joy-Con Wheel.
Alarmo started as “one of our in-house projects” researching motion sensor technology, according to Tamori. His explanation is an eye-opening reminder that Nintendo is always playing with and researching weird technology, some of which might never see the light of day.
“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,” Tamori said.
The duo considers the final product the result of a very challenging development process that doesn’t sound too different from the complexities of game development.
“The gulf between our respective development cultures and personalities led to quite a few... differences in understanding,” Tamori said. “Akama-san and I are designers, so we tend to use abstract words. But fuzzy expressions are difficult to understand for system software programmers and hardware engineers who are used to creating things with precision.”
“If we tell them, ‘Make it go boing!,’ the programmers might come back with, ‘Define boing.,’” Akama said.
The device started development in recent years, and the duo says finalizing Alarmo remotely added its fair share of challenges.
“It was the first time anyone had worked so closely together between the hardware and software teams on the development of a product other than game consoles or game software, so things didn’t always go as expected, and it sometimes got tense,” Tamori explained. “At one point, we were so stumped on the development of Alarmo that we put everything on hold and set aside a week to go and make whatever we wanted instead.”
The duo even gave a behind-the-scenes look at Alarmo prototypes, one of which featured no screen at all. They break down why a full-color LCD display was implemented in the final product (“We thought it was important for people to be able to use it smoothly without an instruction manual,” Tamori said) to why they chose the color red (“We didn't want it to look like an ordinary alarm clock,” Tamori explained).
Alarmo is a rare look at how the studio behind some of the best games of all time collaborates on the oddball, inventive products it’s known for. It's a microcosm of the process that likely resulted in weird and revolutionary hardware like Switch, the 3DS, and even the Wii-U.
While the creation of Alarmo no doubt differs from making a console or video game, Nintendo’s transparency with this novelty device is a welcome change for the company known for secrecy and a fascinating glimpse at what separates it from its competitors in the gaming and tech space.
