[mingw__]

Is there any reason to believe that cheating is something that started recently?

No, and no one involved has suggested this.

Is there any reason to believe that the ROM loaded on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet is exactly the same?

Yes, unless otherwise documented by MAME.

Is there any reason to believe that the components on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet perform the same?

Yes, based on literally thousands of hours of video footage.

[OrangeMango]

> Yes, based on literally thousands of hours of video footage.

Well that's fantastic! Probabilities can be established for all sorts of in-game occurrences and the probability of this dude's game being legit or not.

Not only that, but the gamer ability can then be separated from the randomness of the game on any particular play! Are all the high scores the result of aberrations in the game, or because the player is just that great???

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Speedrunners are very well aware of all the probability based events of the games they play, as well as the odds of those events and any circumstances that can change them [0]. It's called 'luck manipulation'. Usually that's only really useful to tool assisted runs, but on occasion luck manip can be performed by human players.

Regardless, while those in-the-know can recognize that a good run would have been a record if not for an unlucky event, at the end of the day all that matters is your time (or score). Accounting for the randomness is part of the strategy aspect of the sport.

[0] People who speedrun a particular game will also know of any differences in those probabilities across all known versions of the game. These people have studied these games so deeply they usually know more about how they work than the people who made them.

[mingw__]

Probabilities have been calculated from Billy's footage that shows his alleged arcade games rendering as MAME. His random hammer smashes give points way higher than the mean, suggesting he stitched save states in an emulator.