Stratford Record House was formed in
1977 and was established as a competitor to
Guiness. They toured town to town looking for record holders of all kind of activities. With the
video game boom of the
1980's, Stratford formed a new division called "Stratford Video Gaming Records". In
1983, Stratford was bought out by Records Inc. and sadly, all Stratford records were destroyed purposely to eliminate competition for several Record Books published by Records, Inc. Copies of Stratford Records for Video Game scores are floating around the Internet, specically for the following years:
1977 - Complete List
1978 - A - F's
1979 - Complete List
1980 - Partial List
1981 - Unknown
1982 - Unknown
1983 - Complete List
The original Stratford Publication for
1977 has been seen on
EBAY in soft book binder form. It's called:
"STRATFORD VIDEO GAMING RECORDS - 1977 PREMIERE EDITION"
It has been sold as high as 300$ USD
There are only 16 known copies of this publication. Only 2 copies are in near mint condition. Original Circulation was limited to Canada and Northern States. Distribution: 5,000 in first printing, 10,000 second printing. The second printing carried a flaw where pages 23-35 were ommited. Due to this, only a few hundred copies ever hit the shelves before being pulled and destroyed.
A controversy emerged in the mid - 90's over what was considered official gaming scores:
Twin Galaxies vs Stratford Video Gaming Records. Scores for the following games are in question and debated from time to time:
Amadar
Berzerk
Galaxian
Gorf
Space Invaders
Star Castle
Targ
Since Stratford never produced any "video" proof of scores for records set before
1982,
Twin Galaxies seems to have the upper hand for official scores. A drastic error made on the part of Stratford.