I already hate the $100 Nintendo alarm clock

There aren’t many companies that could get me excited by announcing that they’re releasing an alarm clock. When I heard that Nintendo was, however, I must admit, I was already reaching for my wallet. After all, this is a company with a track record of creating incredibly innovative and entertaining products, and also has a huge arsenal of original characters for lovely big hit of nostalgia.

However, once I saw what Nintendo was offering, my wallet was quickly closed. The ridiculously named Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo costs $100 and a significant portion of the key features are based around a Switch game that’s focused on fitness rather than fun. Here’s why I already hate the $100 Nintendo alarm clock.

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The Alarmo only has five options and they’re almost all awful

Nintendo has so many better games to choose from

Nintendo

This is my biggest gripe with the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo and is the main reason why I won’t be handing over $100 to a company that has taken significant amounts of my cash over years.

Initially, you are only able to choose from alarms inspired by five different games. Nintendo has an insane back catalog of classic games to choose from, but for some reason has chosen to ignore classics such as Super Mario World, The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, or Donkey Kong Country. Instead, the five options are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Pikmin 4, Splatoon 3, and for some reason that I will never understand, Ring Fit Adventure.

Don’t get me wrong, Breath of the Wild is an incredible game, and Mario Odyssey may not be my favorite Mario title of all time, but it’s still a fun ride. But Ring Fit Adventure as one of the five options? Seriously?

Nintendo will be releasing more options to download later, such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but it’s clear that the focus is modern games. This is a real waste, as I would happily throw $100 at Nintendo if they’d included a wide range of classic Nintendo games to choose from.

The sounds to wake you are enough to drive you insane

You’ll want to throw your Alarmo through the wall before long

Nintendo

No matter how hi-tech or highly themed your alarm clock is, there is one thing that is more important than anything else: it has to be able to wake you up without you wanting to smash it against the wall. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo fails horribly in this regard.

The video showcasing the Alarmo shows the alarm going off in various modes, and all the sounds that it plays are just horrific. The Splatoon 3 alarm genuinely starts with a massive drum fill, before electric guitars jump in. This would be enough to have me leaping out of bed and reaching for a baseball bat thinking that I was under attack.

It gets even worse. Once the alarm has gone off, if you move around, your movements are accompanied by what sounds like a machine gun, but is actually the sound of splats being fired from Splatoon 3. Even Breath of the Wild, which plays a fairly inoffensive tune from the game, produces a grating ‘ping’ sound every time you move around.

If you were hoping for an alarm that made you wake up slowly and happily, thinking about how much you love Nintendo games, then this really isn’t it. You’re far more likely to quickly grow to detest the music and sounds from your Nintendo games, ruining an otherwise joyful experience.

The motion sensing just seems pointless

Why would anyone want a clock that plays sounds when they move around in bed?

Nintendo

The hideous sound effects when you move around are another reason why I won’t be buying the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo. The motion sensing technology is very clever, and the fact that it can track how much you move during the night is a useful feature to let you know how well you’re sleeping. But why on earth would anyone want an alarm clock that makes a sound when it recognizes that you’ve moved around in bed a little?

It really feels like Nintendo came up with the tech first and tried to find a use for it later, because it’s not a feature you would immediately think of when designing the perfect alarm clock. It makes sense that the Alarmo can detect when you’ve got out of bed and can stop playing its horrific noises, but making sounds every time you move seems utterly pointless other than as a way of showing off that the Alarmo has motion detection. It would be far better if the Alarmo detected when you were moving around in bed and went back into a silent snooze mode for a few minutes, to give you a chance to properly come awake before you get up.

It’s an alarm clock that costs $100

That’s not a huge amount less than the NES cost at launch

Nintendo

When I first saw posts about the Alarmo, I admit I got pretty excited. And then I saw the price tag. $100. For an alarm clock. You can get an Amazon Basics alarm clock right now for $9.87, and that won’t wake you up with the hideous sounds of drums, guitars, and machine guns, or make bizarre noises every time you move around.

This is a Nintendo product, so it was obviously never going to be cheap, but $100 for something that wakes you up and does very little else is just insane. To put it in context, the original NES sold for $180 at launch, and provided hundreds of hours of entertainment. The Alarmo isn’t much less, and it certainly can’t offer the same level of entertainment value.

You need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription to buy one

It will go on sale to everyone else at a later date

The product page for the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo states in big red letters that a Nintendo Switch Online subscription is required. However, it does appear that this is simply in order to purchase the Alarmo before it goes on general sale. The same page states that Nintendo Switch Online members can purchase the Alarmo before it is available for purchase by the general public.

This would seem to indicate that you don’t need a subscription to use the Alarmo, since otherwise it would be pointless to offer it for sale to people that don’t have one. It seems like this is just a perk to reward Switch Online subscribers and may also potentially be a way to try to stop scalpers from buying them all up and selling them on for an even more ridiculous price.

It remains to be seen whether you’ll be able to download additional alarms without a Switch Online subscription, however. The product page states that you’ll need to link your Nintendo account and use the built-in Wi-Fi, so it may be that you won’t need a subscription in order to access the additional content.

I was totally ready to give Nintendo my money

The Alarmo feels like a missed opportunity

Nintendo

I’m a big Nintendo fan and a sucker for nostalgia, so when I heard about the Nintendo Sound Clock Alarmo, I was already reaching into my pocket to pull out however much it was going to cost. But the Alarmo is not what I was hoping it would be at all.

All I wanted was a Nintendo alarm clock packed with characters from the genuinely brilliant games in Nintendo’s catalog, rather than characters I couldn’t even name from Ring Fit Adventure. An alarm clock that showed me Donkey Kong, with some gentle 8-bit music from the games as I woke up? Honestly, I would have paid $100 for that. But this monstrosity is nowhere near what I wanted, and it feels like such a wasted opportunity. Let’s hope the next Switch isn’t such a disappointment.