Even the NES had circuitry against running games that were pirated, unlicensed or for the wrong region. There were workarounds but it didn't get cracked for over twenty years.
I don't think it gets quite mentioned explicitly in this video, and don't I know if it's what the parent comment was referring to, but I recently learned the interesting detail that this lock system was invented for the international NES, and was not a feature of the original japanese Famicom. And apparently Nintendo did have a bit of a problem with large numbers of bad unlicensed games in that market.
This apparently was a small motivator in the development in the japan-only Famicom Disk System, a floppy-disc-like drive addon, which did use a protection system that amusingly was based around trademark law. There was a number of other interesting elements about the Disk System, but I'll suppress my desire to vg history ramble :)
The flash cart era was particularly bad since these carts were so easy to obtain (sold in retail stores) and the internet was available to download games from.
These days they have mostly won through DRM and tying in online multiplayer which can not be pirated.
Even the NES had circuitry against running games that were pirated, unlicensed or for the wrong region. There were workarounds but it didn't get cracked for over twenty years.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8PYE8A-WEw>
I don't think it gets quite mentioned explicitly in this video, and don't I know if it's what the parent comment was referring to, but I recently learned the interesting detail that this lock system was invented for the international NES, and was not a feature of the original japanese Famicom. And apparently Nintendo did have a bit of a problem with large numbers of bad unlicensed games in that market.
This apparently was a small motivator in the development in the japan-only Famicom Disk System, a floppy-disc-like drive addon, which did use a protection system that amusingly was based around trademark law. There was a number of other interesting elements about the Disk System, but I'll suppress my desire to vg history ramble :)
The flash cart era was particularly bad since these carts were so easy to obtain (sold in retail stores) and the internet was available to download games from.
These days they have mostly won through DRM and tying in online multiplayer which can not be pirated.