The test also failed on x86 Tiger 3.x:

http://buildbot.python.org/all/#/builders/30/builds/212

======================================================================
FAIL: test_pre_initialization_api (test.test_capi.EmbeddingTests)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/db3l/buildarea/3.x.bolen-tiger/build/Lib/test/test_capi.py", line 602, in test_pre_initialization_api
    out, err = self.run_embedded_interpreter("pre_initialization_api", env=env)
  File "/Users/db3l/buildarea/3.x.bolen-tiger/build/Lib/test/test_capi.py", line 464, in run_embedded_interpreter
    (p.returncode, err))
AssertionError: -6 != 0 : bad returncode -6, stderr is "Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>\nCould not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>\nConsider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]\nFatal Python error: initfsencoding: unable to load the file system codec\nModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'encodings'\n\nCurrent thread 0xa000d000 (most recent call first):\n"