{"id":25087,"date":"2024-12-06T00:01:03","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T00:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=25087"},"modified":"2024-11-03T14:02:31","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T14:02:31","slug":"alarmo-nintendos-alarm-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/06\/alarmo-nintendos-alarm-clock\/","title":{"rendered":"Alarmo: Nintendo’s…Alarm Clock?!?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nintendo recently released something weird!\u00a0 It\u2019s a fancy alarm clock called the Alarmo!\u00a0 But you can\u2019t get it just anywhere.\u00a0 It\u2019s only available either at the Nintendo store in New York City, or if you have a My Nintendo account and order it on that website.\u00a0 But one thing they won\u2019t tell you in the ads for it is how much it costs.\u00a0 And the price is 100 bucks!\u00a0 That\u2019s insane!\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 I caved in and bought one anyway.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Well one, I was in the market for a new alarm clock.\u00a0 Yeah I\u2019m old fashioned and still use one of those instead of my phone.\u00a0 And two, lots of other people spend big money on those fancy Apple watches, so I figured I\u2019d splurge and give this one a try.\u00a0 So is the Alarmo worth 100 bucks?\u00a0 You\u2019ll just have to read on to find out!<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s a bigger picture of the front of the box.\u00a0 One thing you should know right away is that while it does come with a power cord, it doesn\u2019t come with the plug.\u00a0 You can probably just use one of your phone charger plugs for this, but I hate it when electronics do this kind of thing.\u00a0 Pretty soon we\u2019re going to run out of those.\u00a0 Also if you unplug it, there\u2019s no battery backup to keep it going, so if the power goes out, you might oversleep.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll post the sides of the box, too, since they do a pretty good job of explaining what the Alarmo is SUPPOSED to do.\u00a0 First of all, you can have the screen have one of five characters and sounds from five Nintendo Switch games.\u00a0 You\u2019ve got Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, Pikmin 4, and Ring Fit Adventures. The Alarmo can connect to the Internet and your Nintendo account and supposedly later on you can download other alarms from games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.\u00a0 But as of this writing, you can\u2019t download those yet.\u00a0 \u00a0I\u2019ll go into what each of these games do on the Alarmo later on in this article, as it\u2019s one of the few things that I could get to work right.<\/p>\n

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The other side of the box explains the other big feature of the Alarmo.\u00a0 It uses a motion sensor to detect your movements.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry, it doesn\u2019t have a camera so someone can watch you sleep.\u00a0 It just detects motion.\u00a0 Supposedly the alarm will make noises and intensify the music when you move around but not wake up.\u00a0 And when you get out of bed, it\u2019ll sense that and stop the alarm.\u00a0 But if you get back in bed within that hour, it\u2019s supposed to activate a snooze alarm.\u00a0 I\u2019ll explain how well this worked for me later on.\u00a0 Also, if you sleep with someone or have pets, this part of the alarm clock may not work right for you.\u00a0 So there\u2019s a big limitation right there.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The back of the box shows the best requirements for making the motion sensor work.\u00a0 Like where you have to place the alarm, how high it must be compared to your bed, etc.\u00a0 So yeah, even more limitations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, let\u2019s go over what each of the games do on this alarm.\u00a0 Each game does certain things different.\u00a0 Those things are what\u2019s shown on the screen, the alarms you can pick from, sleepy sounds before bed, and the hourly chime.<\/p>\n

Super Mario Odyssey<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So on the screen it\u2019ll show the font from that game and Mario will walk around and sometimes jump.\u00a0 At night he\u2019ll just lay down.\u00a0 The alarms and sounds are music from the game, so you can wake up to things like Pauline singing a lick from Jump Up! Superstar!\u00a0 You can also turn on sleepy sounds that\u2019ll play right before you go to bed (you have to set your bedtime).\u00a0 Mario\u2019s is just a slow sounding song that sounds like a new age musician fell asleep on their keyboard.\u00a0 You can also have an hourly chime that plays.\u00a0 But don\u2019t worry, you can always turn it off and it won\u2019t go off while you\u2019re sleeping either.\u00a0 Mario\u2019s hourly chime is just him hitting a coin block the same number of times as the hour.<\/p>\n

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here Link just walks around the screen and sometimes jumps and glides down.\u00a0 One of the alarms you can play here from the beginning of the game, where Link is in his healing sleep chamber and Zelda wakes him up telepathically by saying, \u201cWake up!\u00a0 Open your eyes, Link!\u201d\u00a0 So if you want to be woken up by the sound of Princess Zelda\u2019s voice, here you go, you weirdo (just joking).\u00a0 The sleepy sounds is just campfire noises and animal sounds, and some piano licks here and there.\u00a0 Link sits by a campfire on the screen at night, too.\u00a0 The hourly chime is the shrines statues that fill your hearts, and it\u2019ll fill the same number of hearts as the hour.<\/p>\n

Splatoon 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Squid Kid Girl and her pet salmon thing walk around and sometimes she\u2019ll turn into a squid and splash around.\u00a0 The alarms are songs and noises from the game.\u00a0 The sleepy sounds are just a slow song from the game, and on screen she\u2019ll just sit down.\u00a0 The hourly chime has her shooting a block the same number of times as the hour.<\/p>\n

Pikmin 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a little surprised they picked this game for the alarm, because I didn\u2019t think it was as popular.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a big Pikmin fan anyway.\u00a0 The screen just has Olimar and three Pikmin walking around.\u00a0 The alarms are songs from the game, but one has a cute little fanfare that\u2019s fun to wake up to.\u00a0 Sleepy sounds are a relaxing song from the game, and it shows the dog (Oatchi is his name I believe) sleeping.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never played Pikmin 4, but I think the dog is a cute idea, even if he looks a little weird.\u00a0 The hourly chime has Olimar plucking the same number of Pikmin out of the ground as the hour.<\/p>\n

Ring Fit Adventures<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m also pretty surprised that this one\u2019s on there.\u00a0 But I also hear it sold rather well, and good sleep is important to fitness, too.\u00a0 And I\u2019d have to say that Ring Fit Adventures is probably the best fitness game I\u2019ve ever played.\u00a0 I actually felt like I got somewhat of a workout by playing it, and the main story mode houses a very competent RPG, with skill trees and everything!\u00a0 Anyway, the screen here shows the Ring Fit girl walking around and sometimes shooting fire out of the ring.\u00a0 Alarms are songs from the game with the ring talking.\u00a0 Sleepy sounds are a cool down song, and at night the Ring Fit Girl gets on the ground and stretches.\u00a0 Hourly chime has her charging up the ring the same number of times as the hour.<\/p>\n

Anyway, later on you\u2019re supposed to be able to download alarms from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to the Animal Crossing one since that\u2019s my number two favorite game of all time.\u00a0 But I think they should have more.\u00a0 How about Kirby or WarioWare alarms? Wake up with a start with Metroid!\u00a0 \u00a0Or retro Nintendo games?\u00a0 I know it would be too much to ask for third party alarms, but I\u2019d love to see ones based on Pac-Man or Mega Man.\u00a0 What alarms would you like to see for the Alarmo?\u00a0 Let me know in the comments section.<\/p>\n

OK with that out of the way, I\u2019ll talk about how the Alarmo works and my opinions of it.\u00a0 First of all, I\u2019m glad to say that for the most part, it was easy to set up. You use the light up knob on top to spin and make selections by pressing it.\u00a0 There are also buttons for going back in the menus and one for reading notifications.\u00a0 My only problem with setup was when I had to set my time zone.\u00a0 When I was in school, we just learned Pacific Time, Mountain Time, Central Time, etc.\u00a0 So what\u2019s all this GMT business?\u00a0 Why do I have to set up a time zone for an alarm clock anyway?<\/p>\n

But a bigger problem I had was the motion features never worked for me, no matter how much I played with it in setup.\u00a0 The alarm would go off for a minute and I would try and move around, and it would stop after a few minutes and never come back on.\u00a0 Very unreliable, and that\u2019s not what you want in an alarm clock.\u00a0 Luckily you can put it in \u201cButton Mode\u201d where you just turn off the alarm with the button.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what I had to do here.\u00a0 You can also view your sleep records, but with how bad the motion feature worked here, I didn\u2019t trust the results of the records either.<\/p>\n

I think my biggest problem, though, is how they handle brightness.\u00a0 Supposedly you can adjust it for the modes, but no matter what, it\u2019ll automatically adjust to the lights in the room.\u00a0 So at night you can barely see it.\u00a0 I imagine that for most people, this wouldn\u2019t be a problem.\u00a0 But when I wake up in the middle of the night and want to know what time it is, I like to be able to see my clock pretty well.\u00a0 And the brightness wouldn\u2019t bother me anyway.\u00a0 I mean, I spend most of the night with my eyes closed anyway, so I wouldn\u2019t see it.\u00a0 If I\u2019m paying 100 bucks for an alarm clock, I should be able to adjust the brightness to however I want it!<\/p>\n

So yeah, overall I\u2019m pretty dissatisfied with the Alarmo.\u00a0 I\u2019d almost like to send it back to Nintendo and get a refund, but I\u2019m too curious about the Animal Crossing alarm.\u00a0 But yeah, definitely not worth 100 bucks.\u00a0 Simply stated, the Alarmo is A-lame-o!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nintendo recently released something weird!\u00a0 It\u2019s a fancy alarm clock called the Alarmo!\u00a0 But you can\u2019t get it just anywhere.\u00a0 It\u2019s only available either at the Nintendo store in New York City, or if you have a My Nintendo account and order it on that website.\u00a0 But one thing they won\u2019t tell you in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25089,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25087\/revisions\/25089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}