Just in case it wasn’t enough for Nintendo to shadow drop Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo on us, they also saw fit to ensure Alarmo was the latest project to be covered during their “Ask the Developer” interview series. Across four chapters, Producer Yosuke Tamori and Director, Tetsuya Akama were asked many questions, and now it is time to hear their answers.
When talking about Alarmo, Tamori and Akama reveal why Alarmo needs to be plugged in to work, rather than operating on batteries only and why Alarmo’s dial was designed from scratch:
Nintendo Sound Clock | Alarmo Devs on Why Batteries aren’t Included and Designing the Dial from “Scratch”:
Tetsuya Akama: One of the primary reasons is that this device uses a motion sensor to constantly check whether a person is in bed, so if it was battery-powered, it would only last about two weeks at the most. An alarm clock that requires frequent recharging and battery replacement would be useless. And it would be a disaster if you woke up in the morning to find that the batteries had run out.
Another factor was that we wanted to create an alarm clock that could be used without being touched again once it was placed. When you first start using it, you may have to fiddle around with the settings a bit, but over time, you’ll need to do this less and less. After that, you’ll be able to use it just by leaving it plugged in. Rather than having to change batteries, even if it’s only once a year, and take care of the clock, we wanted an alarm clock that would require no maintenance at all, so we decided to have it plugged in.
Yosuke Tamori: When we were developing this product, radio wave sensors were still a rapidly evolving technology, so we weren’t particularly conscious of that thought. However, in hindsight, using it as a motion sensor may have some connection to that idea.
Tetsuya Akama: In terms of hardware, the know-how of creating easy-to-use buttons that we gained through game console development was applied to the dial of Alarmo, and I think this might be, in a sense, lateral thinking. There aren’t many dials in the world that light up, rotate, and can be pressed. After much searching for a dial knob that met our requirements, the team decided to design one from scratch.
Development wasn’t easy, but the hardware and software engineers, drawing on their experience in game console development, kept on working and created many prototypes to ensure that rotating and pressing the dial felt pleasant and to pursue the optimal light intensity. Through repeated trial and error, we believe that we’ve created something entirely new – from the dial alone, you can see this is not your average alarm clock.
Yosuke Tamori: Our team members who’d been working on game development environments and related tools made a special tool for creating alarm sounds. Thanks to this tool, we’ve been able to create lots of alarm sounds efficiently. We were able to apply the know-how we’d cultivated through game development to something completely different – an alarm clock.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 14, Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo – Chapter 3:
Ask the Developer | Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo (Participating Developers)
- Yosuke Tamori | Entertainment Planning & Development Division, Production Group No.4 (Producer)
- Tetsuya Akama | Technology Development Department, Technology Development Group No.1 (Director)
