Man, if only they'd made the cartridge play a little tune when the chip is disabled. Then they could do the full DMCA game. Seems like the key to modern security is to have something copyrighted behind a terrible lock
That seems unlikely to hold up in court. Sega v. Accolade was a very similar situation, and the court found that Accolade's use of a copyrighted string (the "Trademark Security System") was acceptable as an unavoidable requirement of Sega's console.