Every iPod click wheel game is finally free of Apple’s FairPlay DRM

Preservationists for the win

Game preservation is essential these days, thanks to the last few generations of ephemeral digital content. Worse, the corporations that create these digital works have little interest in seeing old games preserved and maintained. One such clear case is Apple and its iPod click wheel games, which were almost lost to time. Still, thanks to the efforts of the community, as well as an enterprising Redditor OlsroFR (via Ars Technica), all 56 iPod click wheel games are finally preserved for everyone to enjoy.

Yes, the iPod offered games, and some of them weren’t bad

The above review is for the iPod click wheel game Zuma, one of the initial offerings for the 5th-generation iPod, sometimes known as the iPod Video. This was before the Classic moniker was used for the mainline iPods starting with the 6th generation; the 5th gen was the first classic iPod with a color screen, and so Apple was keen to sell videos and games on iTunes as a new avenue for revenue.

While not every game controlled great through the iPod’s touch-based click wheel (which combined touch controls with physical buttons), there were certainly some gems worth playing, such as Zuma, and even the review above notes it worked well with the touch scrolling of the click wheel, something I can vouch for, having owned the game on my iPod way back when.

As you can see, there were 56 retail iPod click wheel games offered on iTunes, and every single one has now been preserved, thanks to the iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project. It was no easy feat, but thanks to word of mouth, eventually everything came together.

What’s incredibly ingenious about this project is how it utilizes a virtual machine, allowing users to set up on their home PC to install games onto their iPod, and it all works offline, circumventing Apple’s FairPlay DRM. Basically, we would have seen every single one of these games lost to time had users like OlsroFR not taken matters into their own hands, especially now that all of the files are on the Internet Archive, including a torrent file for easy downloads. The internet is forever, after all.

Perhaps it’s time to revisit these classic games with an iPod Classic

^{Source: iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project}

I, for one, loved my 5th-generation iPod. Of course, I purchased the black model, as it was a new color at the time, and opted for the 60GB version, the highest storage on offer, and boy, was I impressed. Not only because of all of the music I could store, but because I could play games and watch videos on the sucker too, backed by the familiarity and comfort of shopping on iTunes for my digital goods.

Before the iPod, I was already deep into MP3 players, having owned one of the very first Sony releases (the Sony NW-MS7, to be exact), and already had a solid collection of Minidisc players. Portable audio devices were my jam back in the early 2000s (gosh, that’s over 20 years ago, time sure flies), and the iPod blew everything out of the water.

After all these years, I’ve long lost track of what happened to my iPods, but now that all of the classic click wheel games are preserved, perhaps it’s high time I track down a used iPod 5g on eBay and relive the glory days. Using a classic iPod is a growing trend, almost as if purpose-built devices still hold a special place in all of our hearts for doing one thing exceptionally well, distraction-free. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned by modern designers.