After years of searching for files and working around Apple’s FairPlay DRM restrictions, the iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project has completed its quest, rescuing all 54 iPod clickwheel games from digital obscurity. The project centers on a strange time in Apple’s history as a gaming company. Before Apple decided it was a bank that offers credit cards, and predating its explosive success with the iPhone and App Store that turned the tech giant into a major player in games, Apple decided to port timekillers like Sonic The Hedgehog, The Sims DJ, and Monopoly to its revolutionary media player. However, due to restrictions on iTunes purchases and the scarcity of clickwheel iPod users, preserving these games in a single, accessible location, where those who wanted to could download and play them, remained a challenge. Following up on a story from last year, Ars Technica spoke to the project’s creator, GitHub user Olsro, about his quest to create a “master library” of iPod games. Today, with the addition of Real Soccer 2009, Olsro’s dream is now a reality on GitHub.
Transferring music from one’s computer to their iPhones via Apple Music is difficult enough, so it should come as no surprise that transferring files between decades-old devices hasn’t gotten any easier in the years since Apple joined the micro-transaction and subscription revolution. One major hurdle was that all the games needed to be synced to the same iTunes account because even a decade after Apple discontinued the iPod Classic, those games remain locked to the purchasing account. It also required people running a 2018 version of iTunes—from back when it was called iTunes—that could download iOS applications. With the project, Ars Technica reports, anyone using an iPod 5G+ or iPod Nano 3G+ can download and play the games via a virtual machine.
“The clickwheel games were a [reflection] of that gaming period of premium games,” Olsro told Ars Technica last year. “Without ads, bullshit, and micro-transactions and playable fully offline from start to end… Then the market evolved [on iOS] with cheaper premium games like Angry Birds before being invaded with ads everywhere and aggressive monetizations.”
Check out the games and learn how to play them over at GitHub, and visit Ars Technica for the whole story.
