Do you need another alarm clock in your life? Probably not. Every smartphone, smartwatch, and all sorts of other devices out there can already serve as a functional alarm clock, after all. Not to mention, most people these days prefer being gently waken up by sunrise alarm clocks. If you’re a Nintendo fan, though, chances are, you won’t mind adding the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo to your bedroom nightstand.
That’s right, while everybody is waiting for Nintendo to announce the Switch 2, they go ahead and introduce an alarm clock as their newest piece of hardware. Never change, Nintendo, never change. While it won’t play games, it does do an ample job of timekeeping, all while playing sights and sounds lifted directly from various Nintendo titles.
The Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo is a round desk clock with a massive button on top right where alarm bells used to go in vintage alarm clocks from back in the day, so the styling should be familiar to fans of old-school timekeepers. The clock face is made up of a square 2.8-inch full-color LCD panel that can show any of 35 different screen layouts, each one inspired by a different Nintendo game.
According to the outfit, each layout is themed after one of five games, namely Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, Pikmin 4, or Ring Fit Adventure. Each layout comes with its own set of animations, sounds, and characters from the game it draws its theme from. If you choose a Super Mario Odyssey layout, for instance, you get Mario onscreen during an alarm, who then gets visited by various characters from the same title, such as Peach and Bowser, with each subsequent visitor playing more intense sounds the longer you stay in bed.
The Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo has motion sensors that detect whether you’re actually getting out of bed or not. As such, it will continue to play out its alarm sounds and animations until it detects you’ve actually sprung out of your slumber. Because of this, you can also use gestures to snooze the alarm, making it just a tad easier to temporarily delay the inevitable. In case you prefer more traditional alarm clock controls, there’s also a button mode that lets you use the onboard controls for snoozing and turning off the alarm.
Speaking of buttons, there are two small buttons on top of the alarm clock, as well as a large, white one in the top rear that also doubles as a dial for richer onboard controls. It has built-in Wi-Fi, by the way, which you can use to download additional themed screens from games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and more. Hopefully, they’ll keep updating with new screens for free down the line (we have a feeling it will be for a fee at some point, though). Lastly, you can also use the motion sensor as a sleep tracker, with the device automatically logging your sleep movement patterns to the cloud.
The Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo is available now, priced at $99.99.