Even bad iPod click wheel games, like Sega's nearly uncontrollable one Sonic the hedgehog port—could find their own peculiar audience among gaming subcommunities, Olsro argued. “One [person] defeat dark souls using DK bongos, so I wouldn't be surprised if the speedrun community could try running some of those strange games.”
More than just entertainment, though, Olsro said there's a lot of historical interest to be gleaned from this strange pre-iPhone period in Apple gaming history. “Clickwheel games were a reflection[ion] from that period of premium game play,” Olsro said. “No ads, nonsense and micro-transactions and completely offline playable from start to finish… Then the market evolved [on iOS] with cheaper premium games like Angry Birds before being invaded by ads everywhere and aggressive monetization…”
The iPod may not be the ideal device for gaming Sonic the hedgehogbut you can do it!
The iPod may not be the ideal device for gaming Sonic the hedgehogbut you can do it! Credit: Reddit/ajgogo
While Olsro said he's happy with the 42 games he's kept (and especially happy to play Asphalt 4 again), you won't be completely satisfied until your iTunes virtual machine has all 54 Click Wheel titles backed up for posterity. He compared the effort of completing sets of classic game console ROMs “that you can archive somewhere to make sure you can play any game you want in the future (or do research on it)… Getting the full set is also addictive in terms collectible, like any other type of collectible things.”
But Olsro's preservation effort could have a built-in time limit. If Apple ever turns off iTunes reauthorization servers for Click Wheel iPods, you will no longer be able to add new games to your Click Wheel iPod master library. “It's now known that Apple doesn't care about announcing the closure of servers for old stuff,” Olsro said. “If that version of iTunes dies tomorrow, this preservation project will stop. New games will never be added.”
“We don't know how much time we still have to achieve this, so there's no time to waste,” Olsro wrote on Reddit. iPod players who want to help can contact him through his Discord account, inurayama.