The Classic iPod Clickwheel Games Have Been Preserved

The iPod age of gaming came and went fairly quickly during the two-decade lifecycle of Apple’s signature brand of music players. Apple released 54 games for the iPod clickwheel that could have been lost to time if not for the efforts of game preservationists. It took a lot of effort to bring all of the games back together, but the complete lineup of iPod clickwheel games has now been preserved.

As reported by Ars Technica, iPod Clickwheel Games Preservation Project founder Olsro recently completed the collection by tracking down a copy of Real Soccer 2009. Preserving the titles meant finding people who still had the original games downloaded on their iPods and syncing them up to a Virtual Machine master library that lets other iPod owners access the games at their leisure. Olsro also expressed relief that the completed project “means this whole part from the early 2000s will remain with us forever.”

The Virtual Machine titles are compatible with iPod Classic 5G, 5.5G, 6G, 6.5G, and 7G, iPod Nano 3G or 4G, and iPod Nano 5G. Olsro has shared detailed instructions for how to access the Virtual Machine on GitHub. Once those steps are followed, players should be able to enjoy those titles on their own iPods.

The complete list of preserved iPod clickwheel games is reproduced below. They include versions of classic titles like Bomberman, Mrs. Pac-Man, and even Sonic the Hedgehog.