Why do some game consoles give you the choice to switch the dates to the past?

Question

I was playing on my sega Dreamcast, and i notice when it asked me to put the consoles date it gave me a choice to switch the years down to the 1950s lol? I also believe that you can do that on the Gamecube and on the Ps2. Please tell me why they made that option to let you swicth to the Far past.

Answer 1

I don't think it's a matter of them 'letting' you change it to the past, it's just a pain in the butt and a waste of time to write a few lines of coding that would limit how far back you can set the year to.