This Christmas, we'd imagine plenty of Switch consoles are going to make their way under trees all over the world, promising a legion of new players a pretty incredible holiday season.
However, let's spare a thought for the kids back in 1989 who got a NES from Santa, only to find that their parents had also bought this accursed contraption:
That's right; parents were so scared about their children spending too much time playing video games that a company actually created a physical lock which prevented the NES from being used. The lock bolted onto the front of the console and covered the cartridge slot, preventing games from being inserted. The cads.
The device was also marketed as a protection against other people loading up your games and overwriting the save data, but we can't imagine many people bought it for that reason.
According to The Verge, Nintendo declined to officially endorse the $15.95 product, but Safe Care president Tom Lowe claimed to have sold 25,000 units.
Of course, it's not like modern young gamers have totally escaped limitations on their playtime – the Switch has a parental control app, after all – but at least it's more elegant than this ugly chastity belt for your beloved console.
Can you think of a worst Christmas present? Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival, perhaps, but it's a close call.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 57
Does removing the belt count as foreplay?
Somebody send one of these things to Lockpicking Lawyer
Get a top-loader, kids!
CALL A LOCKSMITH!
I probably would have just spent my time cracking the code rather than doing my homework instead.
Or remove joypads. Or power cabke. Or tv cable. Or game cartrid ge. Gullible parents are why this thing existed.
Well wasn't this just a fine waste of money. My dad would just take the AV cables with him to work.
What the hell ?
Who would buy this ?
Paranoid gullible control freak parents ?
Lol I got my ex Amiibo Festival for Christmas one year. She loved it. I knew it was terrible, but it was just her thing.
We had one of these growing up. One time my mom forgot to take the game cartridge out before locking the NES. My brother and I played a lot of John Elway Football until my mom got home.
@Roy2115
Maybe that was the original idea.
Lock in a terrible game so you don't even want to play.
@KitsuneNight I mean, I kinda want one as a collectors item.
Wow. I wish I'd had this that time a burglar snuck through my window in the middle of the night and erased my Zelda save file.
I remember growing up my cousin’s NES had it’s door busted off. I in my youthful exuberance thought it looked cooler that way.
Curious if one of these had existed in their household and just busting the door off was the simplest way they thought of to get around it.
Perhaps they even kept the broken door to keep up appearances that the lock was still fully functioning.
@Lordplops in all fairness, my parents thought taking controllers would work but we just bought more. To think that wwwere being sneaky middle school kids and playing Mario after our bedtime. Now kids are snapchating half naked pictures to each other at the same age. And people willingly get their kids cell phones instead of a gameboy nowadays.
Hasn't Amiibo Festival suffered enough?
@Silly_G yes, literally. Skyrim IRL!
My mom used to try telling me i could only play an hour a day. I was like but mom you can't get anything done in an hour! Especially if it's Zelda or some other Rpg ish game. If she said turn it off and i didn't do it soon enough she'd just come up and yank the power cable right outta the wall!
Note to parents. Don't set a specific amount of time. As long as your kids don't have anything more important to do at the moment let them go nuts! So what if it's over two hours? Don't be like one of those parents so worried it'll rot your kids brains! Trust me it won't!
My man the Lock Picking Lawyer would have this open faster than you can say “nothing on two.”
It doesn't sound like any NES owner was inconvenienced.
Their children might have been though.
Would have been much better if it shocked the kids,
@Zeldafan79 One day when you grow up you will realize your mom was right.
Video games shouldn't be played to excess. Especially by children, they need exercise and to use their imagination.
My mother always threatened to take away the joysticks! (And later the mouse)
@StevenG
Grow up? I'm 40 dude! I just think limiting to an hour a day was a bit harsh! What's wrong with playing games longer if nothing else is going on? Besides i always hated being forced to exercise. I got that enough in gym class at school! Plus you don't get more imaginary than with videogames!
Guess you'd rather have your kids sit in a box and pretend it's a spaceship?
There is a jailbreaking joke in here somewhere .
If you play the classic PC point-and-chick adventure game The Adventures of Willy Beamish Willy's Nintari console has a lock system using a key which Willy's family use to keep Willy from playing video games.
Rightfully scared. I was addicted as a child without online. My nephew is addicted with online. Guess what. With online you don't ever have to stop playing with the right game.
@SCAssassin I got that reference. ;P
My mom just hid the controllers.
These times when there were no Parental Control Apps for consoles.
Now it's software, back then it was hardware.
Can you think of a worse... NOT can you think of a worst.
@Yogsoggoth articles written by gamers not readers. Don't worry though excessive gaming is a much better idea than reading a book, learning an instrument, doing chores. I love games but I could have spent more of my younger years doing productive things. Btw I am 40
@sixrings
It's not an obscure bit of grammar. If you speak the language, it's obviously wrong and should have been caught by an editor or a proof reading.
I wonder did they also sell gaming purity rings as well?
It looks like a screwdriver without the bit.
I just listened to my parents and stopped playing when I was told to.
My dad has a more inventive solution back in the 90s. He added a breakaway cable to the tv’s power cable; Sunday night he’d come and unplug it and I wouldn’t get it back until Friday after school. So Monday to Friday my tv, vhs player and Mega Drive all stood set up in my room, but the tv couldn’t be used! 😂
That sort of thing was made for families like this: https://youtu.be/kwql6_RJ348
Bratty kids and toothless parents. It's not that complex: just set an expectation before they start playing and then hold them to it. And if they can't handle it, they lose the privilege. As soon as some device is acting as your proxy you've failed as a parent.
1 in 10,000 chance? I would've taken those odds (all night) trying to crack the code.
@Donutman Well to be fair, nowadays buying a game boy would be way out of touch since they stopped making them 15 years ago and buying one device that can play games and do other stuff is an easier sell.
At least amiibo festival was a good-looking game (even if it was horrible in every other way) this looks awful on the consol
I don't know whether to facepalm or laugh at this? This wouldn't have worked in my house. My mom played the NES too. They simply took it when I was grounded.
at first I thought it was a Christmas tree attached to the console :/
Ah, ye ‘ol chastity belt...
https://youtu.be/QrdoOeCvN6s
@Silly_G
“A chastity belt?!? Ooh, that’s going to chafe my willie”
Hope it’s not an Everlast. 😂
It's not something, we would have had at home, when I was growing up, at least from what I can remember. Then again, being born in 85, I'm not sure how long I would have been playing the NES, before my family got a SNES.
Of course growing up, I spent Mondays to Thursdays attending the neighborhood community center after school, for a few hours after school. The weekend's would have been, when most my gaming happened, but even then Saturdays were busy with morning cartoons, and afternoons spent outside playing Man Hunt with other kids in the townhouses I grew up in, or riding my bike.
Times were different back then.
Wow. This is insane.
@Zeldafan79 I'm with you, parents should allow children more than an hour a day as long as it doesn't stop children from doing normal things and they're not addicted.
When I was younger both of my brothers got into a lot of trouble. Video games kept me away from becoming like them and I had a lot of fun with friends in multiplayer games on my N64. I still played out with friends like everyone else but video games definitely stopped me from getting in with the wrong crowd.
Comparing generations is a little more difficult as the way we can engage media has changed. We didn't have things such as online play, Free-to-Play or Games Pass. Eventually, no matter how hard I tried, I got bored of the very limited games I could access. They had simple gameplay; and the majority could be beaten in a few hours once mastered.
Games these days games are designed to keep people playing, most don't have a story just a multiplayer mode to keep you engaged (and hopefully spending money). This changes how you engage the hobby (like how Netflix has changed how we engage television and movies). You no longer have to wait to purchase the next game months at a time (or wait a week for the next new episode). So yeah, teaching your child the virtue self-control is more important than it was in the 80's and 90's when I was a kid.
@Yogsoggoth There's also the possibility he meant "Can you think of the worst Christmas present?" As in, the worst one possible, rather than just one that's a bit worse.
@athenian200
I have no issue with the content of his sentence and I understand it perfectly. My point was that it is a basic grammar point and should have been caught in editing.
Definitely know some parents who wish they could have a lock like this for their kids' consoles now.
@StevenG lol I played games dang near 24/7 from early 80s to now...I work a awesome job and still play video games and I'm 39
@Darkyoshi98 Somehow you never learned what survivorship bias is. Do you think your lack of education is related to your video game playing?
N64 with no AC Adapter and no TVs in the house with composite video. No stores open and just a box... terrible.
@Darknyht
Yeah I feel like when I was a kid (mega drive/PS1 era) games didn't really force your attention it was down to you. Whereas now games are literally battling for your time. For example just two of the games that I play destiny 2 and crash team racing both have a pass type thing. Meaning if you don't give them both a certain amount of time then you will miss out on time gated content. I hate how so many games have this now. I literally feel relieved when I have got everything done and can stop playing it - which is just stupid lol. But when you have put a lot of time into a game you don't suddenly want to start missing stuff.
@wazlon
Exactly! Had it not been for my videogame fandom/addiction or whatever you wanna call it i very well could have ended up very differently. I'd probably be a pot head or constantly in jail like most of the idiots i used to call my friends. They chose the thug life and i picked up a controller instead. Gaming probably saved my life!
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