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Columns > MomGamer > #66: Console Parental Controls Rule!
You have the power! You just may not know it yet. Here's a look at the care and feeding of the Parental Controls on the Xbox and the PS2.  Don't want your kids playing "Super Blood-soaked Smashum", but it's hard to be there all the time to keep an eye out. You didn't buy the thing, but you know is buddy owns the game and would love to lend it your son. You already have help with this, but you may not know it. Parental Controls are one of the biggest tools parents have at their disposal in this generation of consoles. Since they're not exactly "cool", they don't get nearly the press they deserve. Many parents don't know they are there, or they don't know how to use them. Those geeks in the magazines may be frothing about polygons and framerates, but for a parent who wants to have some control over what goes on with that machine when they're not present these things are a godsend. Here's all you need to know to setup and use the parental controls for the Xbox, and for the PS2. Choosing Your Code For both systems, you have to choose a password, similar to your cable system's code. The Xbox is a combination of four buttons on the controller, and the PS2 code is four numbers. I'd go by the same rules that you would use for any strong password - try not to include any obvious patterns. For the Xbox, use several different types of button on the face of the controller, including at least one of the triggers. Keeping them changed on a random basis is also a good idea. Also, if you have more than one system don't make them the same. This might seem complicated, but if you just have one console, it's really simple. I have a LOT of hardware in my house. I'm very hardcore about this and I live with a budding cryptologist (my younger son). I change mine on both systems when I clean them once per month just as a part of my usual maintenance, and I use the same system I use to keep my PIN numbers secure to keep track of them. If your child is REALLY bored or incredibly focused, it's conceivable they could sit down and just keep trying until they figure it out. It's not that much more complicated than your VCR code. I saw one guy on a message board who claimed he could break a PS2 code using a systematic approach in two days. I'm not sure I believe him, though. My younger son used to break people's parental lock codes on our local cable system in about four hours. He's gotten into one of our PS2s, but the person who had it before us had set it to "1234", so it wasn't exactly a hard one. We had a long session of Spaceballs jokes after discovering that (that's the code for the airshield around Druidia and there's a big joke about that number being just like the code on some idiot's luggage). He's never managed the Xbox. Maybe the fact that it's not numbers seems to make it harder to keep a dictionary attack straight. Plus that's a lot of time to invest that you could spend playing games. Setting the Controls For the First Time Xbox
Playstation 2 The Playstation 2 Parental Control doesn't have any opinions about games, I'm afraid, but it does cover playing DVD's. I was going to write up this thing about how to set it up, but then I found this great article here that describes everything better than I can, with pictures. Just remember this: eject the DVD before resetting or switching off the system. If you turn it off while the disk is still in there it won't have saved the changes. Don't get me started on that little piece of design genius. I recommend just kicking out the disk and rebooting it just on general principles when you make any settings changes, so you know for sure they've been applied correctly. Can't Remember your Password? Say six months down the road you want to change the settings and now you can't remember them. Or maybe you've bought a used unit and you don't know the code they used. You don't have to call Microsoft or Sony. I thought long and hard about including this information. My children read this site, and I know others do. I found the Xbox instructions using the Google search "Xbox parental password can't remember", and it was the first choice, so if your kids are internet savvy they can find this pretty easily. It's all over the cheat sites, too. However, it's also relatively easy to tell if your child has done this - it removes the old password entirely. If all of a sudden, your password doesn't work then something is rotten in the state of Denmark. This isn't a fire-and-forget thing. You still have to occaisionally try it out and see. Resetting your Xbox password isn't that complicated. Here it is. Here's how to reset it if you get a used PS2, or if you forget what you set it to.
I'm glad to say the next generation systems are also including these features, and expanding on them. It has been announced that the Xbox 360 has parental controls for both games and DVD, and is supposedly expanding it to cover Xbox Live and all it's new features (not only the games themselves, but friends lists, file sharing and marketplace purchases). I don't know how it works but it sounds cool. No specific word on the PS3 yet, but I'll be keeping an eye out as the system comes closer to it's launch next summer.
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