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 discussed why Nintendo Characters were used to depict Alarmo’s motion sensor reactions:
Nintendo Sound Clock | Tamori on Using Nintendo Characters for Alarmo:
Yosuke Tamori: All along, we’ve wanted to make it obvious that Alarmo’s motion sensor is reacting to the users’ movements. Originally, we were thinking of a system where a simple circle is floating in the display. If you move to the right, the circle will stretch out to the right, and if you move to the left, it will stretch out to the left. If you get out of bed, the circle will bounce off somewhere.
It wasn’t bad in terms of an interactive experience, but the vibe was completely different from the clock’s display. Even if it’s not a gaming console, when it comes to hardware released by Nintendo, people will still expect character elements. The interactive experience using motion sensors seemed to be improving, and the screen was changed to an LCD that could display Nintendo characters.
Taking all of that into consideration, we agreed that it might be best to steer in the direction of proactively using characters. Since Nintendo characters that appear in game series – such as Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda – each have their own characteristics, we thought that being able to choose which characters to show on the screen by switching the alarm sound would add further value to Alarmo. So eventually, we decided to proceed in that direction.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 14, Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo – Chapter 4:
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)
