Last year I wrote about Nintendo’s alarm clock, the Alarmo.  Well since then they’ve added a few new alarms you can download, so I thought I’d write about them here.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

One of the new alarms they said you could download later when they first came out with the Alarmo was Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.  The clock has Mario in his kart driving around, and sometimes jumping and gliding.  At night it has the kart and the Toad pit crew standing around it.  The sleepy sounds are some soft music from the game.  The alarm has various music and I think it’s funny that it’ll start with the traffic light red to green sound when you first start a race.  What a way to start your day!  The hourly chimes have the racers rev by and they’ll say something as they pass, like “whoo-hoo” or whatever, and however many hours the time is, that’s how many racers will pass.

Super Mario Bros.

This one was a bit of a surprise, as they didn’t announce this one beforehand.  On March 10, which Nintendo has labeled “Mario Day” because it’s Mar10, they released this special alarm for you to download.  I wish they’d do more 8-bit ones like this.  The clock just has blocky Mario running and jumping around.  At night it just shows a pipe.  Hey these older games didn’t have a whole lot of animations!  I guess Mario’s just sleeping in the pipe.  The sleepy sounds aren’t from the game either, just a soft rendition of the Mario theme.  The alarm just plays music from the game, and you don’t have a lot to choose from since there was only a few songs in Super Mario Bros.  Hourly chimes is just Mario hitting a coin block as many times as the hour.

Animal Crossing

Since this is my second favorite game of all time, I was really looking forward to this one when they announced it would be a download later.  The clock has Tom Nook, Timmy and Tommy running around.  Sleepy sounds are just soft music from the game, and at night it just has Blathers the owl sleeping.  Which is kind of weird since in the game, Blathers sleeps during the day (being an owl and all).  The alarms have music and voices from the newest entry: New Horizons, but the voices are kind of annoying first thing in the morning.  The hourly chime just sounds like a cuckoo clock you can get in the game, and Brewster is on screen ever polishing a cup.  But what’s disappointing is how they displayed the numbers.  They are white on beige squares, and they are very hard to see.  You can’t even see them in this picture.  Granted it’s because the light was so glary, but it’s almost as bad.

So yeah, ultimately the Alarmo is still a big disappointment, especially since the one I was waiting for turned out to be a letdown.  I doubt Nintendo will do any more alarms for this thing, but if they do, and I feel like it, I might write about them too.  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Misc