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.
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 :)