It was solely on day two of introducing Nintendo’s new alarm clock to my family that my girlfriend started to crack. As we wakened one morning to the chaotic sounds of Splatoon 3, she turned to me in a morning daze. “I don’t just like the Alarmo,” she sadly squeaked with drained sincerity. “It’s aggressive.”
As if on cue, the sound of a military of Inklings firing their weapons blared from the nightstand.
A part of the territory that comes with a online game writing job is that you simply sometimes must topic the individuals you reside with to very foolish issues. Typically you’re taking over the lounge for every week and wander round in a VR headset. Different occasions you find yourself poisoning your private home with an AI-powered gadget that hooks as much as your TV and leaks putrid scents primarily based on the sounds within the recreation you’re enjoying. I stay for that eclectic side of the job, however it has its casualties.
So, I knew precisely what was going to occur the second Nintendo introduced the Alarmo. The oddball motion-sensor alarm clock would little doubt flip my house right into a battlefield as soon as once more, with my girlfriend pressured to endure one other piece of stunt tech journalism. It might be our most difficult trial so far, turning probably the most peaceable a part of our day into our most hectic for every week. But it surely’s by means of that course of that I might come to embrace who the Alarmo, and Nintendo’s tasks at massive, are actually meant for.
Get up, celebrity
It was a random Wednesday morning when Nintendo dropped a video showcasing a brand new piece of {hardware}. When you simply learn that sentence divorced from context, you may fairly assume that the corporate lastly revealed its subsequent console, which is because of be proven any day now. That wasn’t the case. As a substitute, the gaming large unveiled the Alarmo. The five-minute clip showcased an interactive alarm clock that would prompt users to get up by playing the sounds of Switch games and utilizing a motion sensor.
It was a bizarre announcement, but the kind that instantly served as a reminder of Nintendo’s signature creative spirit. After the initial confusion wore off, social media commentators seemed to slowly warm up to the idea of a Nintendo-fied lifestyle gadget. After all, its ad showcased adults waking up to the clock, signaling that the Alarmo might be a good bit of handy wellness tech meant to encourage better sleeping habits in its older fans. As someone who has been snoozing to Pokémon Sleep ever since its release, I was willing to try it out … but I wasn’t the only person who’d have to participate.
With an Alarmo set to arrive at my apartment the next morning, I called my girlfriend in and explained what was about to happen: Nintendo made an alarm clock and I planned to test it out for a full week. She’s always a great sport about these kinds of things, though I could sense a little bit of terrified resignation this time. And that was before either or us really understood the full extent of what we were in for.
As I unboxed the cute red device and began the setup process, I quickly began to realize that the Alarmo wouldn’t just be an alarm clock that woke us up with Nintendo sounds. With my head hung in preemptive shame, I explained exactly what we’d be doing every morning for the next week. I’d have to shake my body around if we wanted to stay in bed longer and quiet the alarm. The real catch, though, was that the Alarmo would only fully shut off when we both fully got out of bed. If I got up and she stayed, it would eventually trigger an aggressive “hurry up!” state that would ratchet up the noise.
This would be our life for the next week. I prayed we would still be living together by the end of it.
Cohabitating with the Alarmo
Despite my melodramatic retelling, my girlfriend and I were both excited to give the Alarmo a whirl. It was silly, sure, but it was so absurd that it would make for another great relationship anecdote, like the time we tested the GameScent together and came out of it with headaches. The first morning quickly reinforced our assumption, because the Alarmo is far more bizarre than even its trailer reveals.
Rather than picking an alarm myself, I set the device to random shuffle mode throughout the week. On the first day, we were not woken up by the gentle twinkle of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s piano score or Mario’s chipper voice; the sounds of Ring Fit Adventure flooded the room instead. I say “sounds” instead of music because the Alarmo doesn’t just play game tunes as a scene plays out on the round clock face. It plays jarring sound effects too. We woke to a high-pitched voice telling us it was time to row a boat. Neither of us had any idea what was going on as we came to. I turned my head to my girlfriend to say, “What is going on?” but the motion sensor tracked that as a movement, and the Ring Fit trainer yelled “Great!” before I could speak.
I waved the sounds off after a chaotic moment and we both caught our breath. As we discussed it, the alarm would start back up every five minutes or so, and I’d have to stop to wave my arms like an inflatable tube man in a car lot. After a few rounds of that, the Alarmo entered its loud “hurry up!” state. I got out of bed in a panic, but it didn’t stop. I reminded my girlfriend that she’d have to get out of bed too. I watched the light leave her eyes in that moment as she rolled out of bed with a guttural grunt.
That night, as I was resetting the alarm, we agreed that Ring Fit was a weird first introduction. We hoped the next morning would be a bit gentler, so I knocked down the alarm intensity a peg. There are three options in the settings menu, from lively to gentle. When exploring the menu, I did discover that the Alarmo has a more traditional shutoff option, which only asks users to hit its white plastic topper to shut it off. Naturally, I withheld this information from her. I could not jeopardize the experiment by giving us a tempting, but easy way out.
Our next few mornings were just as strange. Splatoon’s teenage energy jolted us out of bed on day two, while another Ring Fit alarm really took us off guard when our day started with a voice yelling “Your muscles look so happy!” What’s most strange about it all is the early execution. Had the Alarmo simply played some music and showed a bit of pleasant gameplay on the screen, it would be a slam dunk. I’d love to wake up to the opening theme of Kirby and the Forgotten Land as a car-shaped Kirby drove around. Instead, even the most pleasant scenes are interrupted by the sound of Link slaughtering a Bokoblin camp.
After a few days, we learned to fear the Alarmo. Every morning threatened to bring another cacophonous soundscape that would launch us out of bed. And things only got weirder in our household as we discovered new features. When I put on a “soothing sounds” option one night, which plays five minutes of ambiance after your set bedtime, we had a playful argument over the sheets as a discordant hum loomed in the background. One morning, I checked our recorded sleep stats and realized that the Alarmo wasn’t just tracking our movements while we slept, but it was recording them through the entire day.
“It’s watching … everything?” she asked with a slow realization of horror. Yes … yes, it was.
Embracing the audience
Midway through our test week, my girlfriend caught a break. I had to head to Massachusetts for an overnight trip to visit my family. That meant I would have to pack up the Alarmo and take it with me. She was thrilled, excited to lounge in bed on a Sunday morning rather than rolling out to make Yoshi stop shouting at her. I tossed it in my backpack and unpacked it later at my parents’ house, a Cape Cod home that I spent countless hours in as a kid. As I did, I had to explain it all to my mother.
“You should give it to your niece!” she said, further plunging the knife of embarrassment in.
I set it up on the nightstand next to my bed in the front guest room when I noticed some artifacts right behind it. On one side, there was a Beanie Baby that I treasured dearly as a kid. On the other, there was a small school picture of me, smiling and wearing a green Lion King T-shirt. I looked back at the Alarmo, as Captain Olimar ran across the display in sync with my body movements, and suddenly it all made more sense. That third grader would have been so excited to have a toy like this growing up. And my mother was right: My seven year-old niece would get a kick out of it too. That’s who the Alarmo is actually meant for, even if its misleading ad doesn’t feature a single kid.
I had to bring the Alarmo on vacation lmao pic.twitter.com/WHy7ooBXJ4
— Giovanni Colantonio (@MarioPrime) October 13, 2024
Upon waking up alone in my mother or father’s home the following morning, my expertise with the Alarmo made rather more sense. I used to be roused by a little bit of Pikmin noise, and I turned to discover a neon inexperienced monster staring again at me. I let loose a bit of smile earlier than smacking the lovable high button to show it off (at this level, I spotted that I used to be solely refusing to make use of the characteristic at house extra for the comedic torment than no matter justification I wrote about earlier). I felt like a child once more.
When speaking about Nintendo as an grownup who nonetheless engages with its merchandise, it may be simple to neglect who the corporate’s target market actually is. For each older participant who complains in regards to the high quality of Pokémon or a scarcity of innovation in Yoshi video games, there’s a bit of child who’s having the time of their life enjoying a recreation made by a few of the business’s finest designers. I used to be that child rising up, and it’s precisely how I got here to like video games as a lot as I do right now.
I’ve grown since then and Nintendo suits into my life a bit otherwise than it used to. My front room isn’t continually full of highschool buddies yelling over rounds of Tremendous Smash Bros. Melee. The Alarmo grew to become a logo of that in the course of the week. A rambunctious toy meant to begin my day with a little bit of play isn’t the best match for an grownup life the place I’m sharing a house with a associate. As a substitute, my relationship to Nintendo occurs in joyful spurts once I’m curled up on the sofa with my Swap whereas soccer takes over the TV. Video games like Tremendous Mario Bros. Surprise change into private moments of consolation that I savor, relatively than the middle of my universe. I’ve outgrown the Alarmo, however it’s not a tragic realization that leaves me craving for my misplaced youth. I’m simply in a distinct section of my life and am blissful to see the baton handed down.
Perhaps I actually ought to mail it to my niece, in spite of everything. Lord is aware of my family will thank me for the epiphany.
