Hi. Here's a chart.
The top 10 Donkey Kong scores at the end of every month, from August 1999 through the end of November 2017. 220 months. I started with August 1999 because that was the last month that Billy's 874k was the WR.
Please note, this is not a progression of the top 10 PLAYERS...it is only showing the top 10 SCORES. Also shown in red is the average of those top 10 scores over time. The big purple shaded area shows the parity of the top 10...the standard deviation of those scores. So, when Ben Jos topped Billy's 874k in September 1999, the skill gap was at its largest among the top 10 players. August 2015 was when the top 10 were most evenly matched (if you go by scores). Left-side y-axis is score, right-side y-axis is parity/standard deviation of those scores.
Usual caveats with this kind of data apply: I can only chart what I know and there were certainly many players who were better than 300k-400k back in the day. Also, this takes into account unofficial but generally trustworthy scores (
)...scores by
and Scott Kessler, for example.
This is a large image file that you'll most likely need to scroll horizontally, so the original is attached if you'd like to download it for easier viewing.