This iPod prototype was hiding Apple’s unreleased Tetris clone

YouTuber Apple Demo has discovered a prototype third-generation iPod that accommodates a recreation known as Stacker, which by no means made it to retail fashions. Along with Apple’s personal model of Tetris, the engineering pattern iPod additionally got here loaded with different unreleased titles, together with video games known as Block0 and Klondike, as famous by Engadget.

On the again of the prototype iPod, a “DVT” (Design Validation Testing) label is etched the place the storage capability usually goes, which, Apple Demo explains signifies it was from the center stage of growth. Two songs nonetheless in its storage and a helpfully-named playlist recommend this gadget was used for battery testing.

After some tinkering and transplanting the interior laborious disk right into a second-generation iPod Apple Demo received the laborious disk in addition as regular, and out of the video games accessible, they solely demoed Stacker.

They even contacted the ex-SVP of Apple’s iPod division, Tony Fadell, to study why the Tetris clone was by no means launched. Nonetheless, Fadell’s solely remark, from 2022, says, “as a result of we added video games with later software program launch,” leaving the interior story of Stacker a thriller for now. Apple did launch a licensed Tetris recreation years in a while the “Basic” iPod fashions, which supported new recreation titles bought from the iTunes Retailer.

Stacker makes use of the iPod’s click on wheel to maneuver falling blocks left and proper, and the middle button drops them to the underside of the display. The target, like Tetris, is to shoot for a excessive rating by finishing and clearing traces of bricks and never overstacking items off the highest. The sport isn’t completely polished — there’s a minimum of one bug proven within the video the place a brick overlapped a stack and received caught when rotated. However it works!