NES ‘Homework First’ Physical Console Lock is Found

I must admit, given I have a kid of my own now, that I can fully understand that my parents possibly bought me my NES console back in 1988 as more of an investment than a purchase. It did, after all, manage to successfully keep me out of their hair for fairly significant periods of time while I attempted, without much success, to beat games such as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and Super Mario Bros 1. – Following a video posted on the highly-excellent ‘Gaming Historian’ YouTube channel, a new peripheral has been revealed that, quite frankly, I’m very grateful my parents never discovered!

NES Video Game Lock!

The ‘Homework First’ lock is something that even today makes a shiver run down my spine when you come to understand the concept. Put simply, it’s a bike combination lock that was designed to clamp onto the front of your NES console making the cartridge slot completely inaccessible. The idea being, of course, to make the NES completely inoperable until ‘mom’ and/or ‘dad’ said it was ok.

For me though, I can see more than a few fundamental flaws with this concept.

What Do We Think?

Personally, I can see why this ‘product’ was never overly successful. Firstly, if my parents put this on my NES, rather than doing homework I think I’d be spending my time cycling through the 10,000 possible combinations available. I mean, I’d find the code sooner or later, right?… – Secondly, and perhaps I’m missing something here, but if you didn’t want your kids to play the damn thing, why not just hide the controllers? Or, shock and horror, try applying a little discipline! – That costs nothing and would surely be at least as effective as this.

Still, it’s certainly a novelty and we thank the ‘Gaming Historian’ for bringing it to light. – You can, incidentally, check out their YouTube channel (which I thoroughly recommend) via the link here!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!