Apple's first mobile gaming device: an iPod with a click wheel.
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Gaming on the iPod has barely predated the iPhone in 2007, but fans have launched a project to ensure they can still play games in the future.
An iPod fan named Quix discovered a small loophole in Apple's digital rights management (DRM) for iPod games: they could manually back up their iPod games to a second copy of iTunes on another computer. They then used this method to back up their 19 iPod clickwheel games.
After discussing their discovery with a French user named Olsro on the iPod fan Discord group, they started a project to save iPod Clickwheel games. Olsro created a “community virtual machine that anyone can use to sync authorized clickwheel games to their iPod” using the Qemu emulator.
The virtual machine allows anyone with an iPod clickwheel to “authorize” it to download game files from the iPod clickwheel. Since the games can't be redownloaded from Apple, user backups are the only way to save them.
Basically, anyone who still has working .IPG files (iPod games) can now protect them from an iPod crash if they haven't previously backed up the games to a Mac or PC. The project's new website doesn't include a way to play any of the games without the user having their iPod clickwheel, but it does make the games available to share across those devices.
Using USB passthrough to sync games with the virtual machine. Image credit: Github/Olsro
iPod Click Wheel Games
A total of 54 games were created for the iPod click wheel, which were originally sold for $7.49 each through the iTunes Store. Vendors such as Electronic Arts, Sega, and Square Enix were among those who collaborated with Apple to create versions of popular games adapted for play with the click wheel.
Among the games released were Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokemon, the pinball emulator Multiball, Asphalt 4: Elite Racing, Ms. Pac-Man, Real Soccer 2009, and many more. The preservation project has now retrieved 42 of the original 54 games.
Apple stopped selling the games in 2011, removing them from iTunes. However, it still allows users to reauthorize their existing games on their iPods.
This ability to reauthorize games is key to the project’s ability to share these games with people with working iPods with a Click Wheel. Apple could shut down the server that handles reauthorizations at any time, which Olsro said would halt the preservation project.
“We don’t know how much time we have left to complete [preserving copies of all 54 games], so there’s no time to waste,” Olsro said in a Reddit post. Those interested in contributing their games to the preservation project should contact Olsro via the “inurayama” Discord account.
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