This article is from the first edition of The Video Game Librarian website I published between 2008 and 2010. It was originally written on September 9, 2008.

A few days ago, a link at Kotaku lead me to the Stanford University How They Got Game blog. In turn, that site showed me the way to Stanford’s Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection of video games.

How They Got Game is a research blog detailing the history and cultural impact of video games while the Cabrinety Collection is a list of the hundreds of games they have in their collection. Both blogs are an interesting look at how librarians are attempting to preserve some of the more unique pieces of video game history.

The Kotaku article focused on a blog post discussing products licensed by Nintendo in the 80s including paper plates, a backpack and Nintendo Cereal System (which, by the way, was delicious to my seven year old self). In “Errant Nintendo Licensing“, Stanford’s Eric Kaltman also examined how Mario and Link, Nintendo’s flagship mascots, were rendered by different artists for these products.

A part of me is actually amazed that someone was able to find this stuff in good condition after 20 years.