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 discussed some of the standstills that affected development:
Nintendo Sound Clock | Alarmo Devs on Development Standstills:
Yosuke Tamori: Especially since development took place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, not being able to have close communication had a large impact. At one point, we were so stumped on the development of Alarmo that we put everything on hold and set aside a week to go and make whatever we wanted instead.
Exactly. To refresh everyone’s understanding of the motion sensor’s characteristics, without being bound to alarm clocks, we asked hardware and software team members to pair up and freely come up with ideas. There were ideas such as leveraging the motion detection function to recreate “Daruma-san ga koronda” (Daruma-san Fell Down) or performing music by moving your body in time with the rhythm. It was fascinating to see all the ideas that came out of this process.
It was the first time anyone had worked so closely together between the hardware and software teams on the development of a product other than game consoles or game software, so things didn’t always go as expected, and it sometimes got tense. But through this experience, we were able to rediscover the enjoyment of developing together and it brought the teams much closer to each other.
Tetsuya Akama: Eventually, with the improvement in the motion sensor’s response, it got close to the final product. I believe that having the time to create various prototypes freely, with team members becoming closer in a way that transcended profession or position, was key to getting the project moving forward.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 14, Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo – Chapter 2:
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)
