Experience with cartridge archival?

A mutual acquaintance of mine is trying to write a thesis and needs a little help. He writes: "The project that I am working on is for my Masters in Library Information Science degree with a focus on Archiving. For my paper I have to write a 10 to 12 page paper on a subject that involves the preservation of something that has archival significance. So I decided to do it on video games and what steps are being taken to preserve them on the media that they were originally written on such as Atari and Nintendo cartridges some of which are degrading significantly and no longer work on the game systems they were designed for." If anyone has any help or leads for him, or any experience archiving ROMs/cartridges that may degrade over time and how to properly preserve them, please drop him a line at "andrew.pacilli at simmons.edu". Your input can shape an archivist's future :-)