Late in 2024, Nintendo announced the Alarmo, the quirkiest alarm clock we would’ve grabbed immediately if alarm clocks were still a big thing. Today, the company has announced its next clock-like toy: the Talking Flower from Super Mario Wonder.

To me, the Talking Flower was a welcome addition to the franchise’s burgeoning cast of characters. The occasionally appearing character delivered timely quips that broke the monotony of the level’s music or provided meaningful tips.

However, there is a good number of players who find the flower irritating and mute the character altogether. If you’re part of this group, then Nintendo’s latest clock isn’t for you.

The new Talking Flower doesn’t have its own clock display. It only has a speaker, but it can announce the hour “mostly accurately,” according to Nintendo.

It’s an odd product. The brand wants the flower to be glitchy. Besides being “mostly accurate” with the time, it can also randomly blurt out alerts in one of its handful of available languages, outside of what the user set.

Further, it can comment on the weather and play music. It can also say “words of encouragement and silly quips” randomly throughout the day. The Talking Flower certainly has the spirit of the character it’s modeled after.

As for input buttons, it only has a single button. One press makes it say something outside of its scheduled prompts. Holding the button for two seconds silences the thing.

The Talking Flower will ship out on March 12. It will sell for US$ 34.99.

SEE ALSO: This Nintendo Alarmo clock looks absolutely adorable

Mario Kart World needs little to no improvements. The latest entry in the legendary racing franchise introduced players to the open-world format. Taking advantage of that new format, the game also has a unique new mode called the Knockout Tour. Today, Mario Kart World is getting a surprising-but-welcome update which adds a team option to the survival mode.

In stark contrast to Mario Kart’s usual gameplay, Knockout Tour introduces a battle royale element to the game. The mode strings together a series of races seamlessly leading from on to the next via the open-world format. Players are eliminated for placing at or near the bottom after every leg, eventually leading to a three-way race to finish first.

Prior to today’s announcement, players race for themselves. But now, via a free update, players can now compete in two teams of twelve, three teams of eight, or four teams of six. They must still survive individually, but points are now collated based on teams.

The number of points derives from finishing position. Finishing in P1, for example, will bag the player a total of 50 points for that leg. Meanwhile, eliminated players get only a single point. At the end of the entire tour, everyone’s points are tallied up, and the win is awarded to the team with the most points.

The new mode can be raced locally or online. If the pool lacks players to round out the teams, the game will provide AI opponents.

The update is rolling out now and is for free.

SEE ALSO: I played Mario Kart World and it was a full-throttle race to the finish

Following Mario Kart World’s switch to an open-world format, the gauntlet has been thrown for casual racing sims to keep up with Nintendo’s racing series. The Forza Horizon series, which hovers closer to arcade-like gameplay over technical racing titles, is next in line to build this year’s racing game via the upcoming Forza Horizon 6.

The new racing title was announced back in September during the Tokyo Game Show. Apropos to where it was announced, Forza Horizon 6 will finally take its fans to Japan. At the time, the announcement teaser shared nothing about gameplay, but there might not be a lot of surprises anyway.

Today, we finally found out whether Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios have something up their sleeves for this iteration. In a new showcase, the studio confirmed that the title will have its largest map to date with different biomes and seasonality. Normally, a larger map sounds groan-inducing, especially with so many bloated open worlds these days, but a car-based open-world game sounds like heaven.

For gameplay, players will start off as a visitor to the iconic Horizon Festival, which will take over Japan. By racing others with starter cars, they can earn access to faster cars, other parts of the map, and trickier races.

Right from the start, players will have access to 550 cars. They can install liveries on the windows now. As always, there are garages now, but there’s also a massive buildable area called The Estate. For the first time, players can put up buildings for their customizable area.

There’s so much to be excited for this time around. Forza Horizon 6 will launch for Xbox Series X|S and PC on May 19. The PlayStation 5 version will also launch later this year.

SEE ALSO: Forza Horizon 6 will be set in Japan