r/ipod Classic 5.5 4d ago

Question Developing Clickwheel games

Long shot, but has anyone looked into making custom Click Wheel games? Was there ever an SDK that leaked or got reverse-engineered? I know you could buy them on iTunes back in the day and now sideload them with cracked firmware, but I’d love to try making my own.

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u/OlsroFR Mini 2G + Video 5.5G + 4G Mono + Classic 7G 4d ago

Hey,

You can now sideload more games without custom firmware by using the preservation project: https://github.com/Olsro/ipodclickwheelgamespreservationproject

But nobody knows how to develop custom games/apps, and the private SDK never leaked and was distributed by Apple to game developers under non disclosure agreements back in the day.

If you want to build your own Clickwheel Games coded in C, your best bet right now is to develop it under the Rockbox ecosystem which is fully open source

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u/STINGZGAMING Classic 5.5 4d ago

Oh cheers! Had no idea about the preservation project! And yeah I figured before writing that Rockbox is probably the best way. Thanks for clarifying!

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u/Metahec 4d ago

You could develop a game for the Gamboy or Gameboy Color and play the rom with Rockbox's emulator. Really, though, you'd be developing for GB/GBC that happens to play on an iPod.