I was curious about this so I went and crunched some numbers. Turns out there's a lot of scoring data available on the internet archive for 2008, but not so much for earlier years, so we'll have to start at 2008. Here was my methodology:
1. Find all songs released prior to 2008 that are currently rated above 70 difficulty
2. For each song, find the leaderboards on the internet archive, paste them into a spreadsheet and calculate "AAA equivalency" based on the raw scores
3. Write a Python script to pull in the data and calculate skill ratings for each player
Here is the theoretical 2008 leaderboard I came up with:
Top players:
1. MrRubix 87.5494
2. -Laggy- 85.8754
3. samtorx 85.6778
4. darkshark 85.1022
5. ~Zero~ 83.6960
6. EAGAMES 83.3831
7. ieatyourlvllol 83.2844
8. AOD_ELEMENT 82.5830
9. Shashakiro 82.0424
10. Xiaounlimited 81.6932
11. smartdude1212 81.4742
12. jimerax 81.3495
13. XXXsmittyXXX 80.9958
14. gameboy42690 80.8325
15. Sprite- 80.8097
16. Izzy 80.5302
17. gnr61 80.1907
18. TC_Halogen 79.8391
19. [HectoGtzMX] 79.5178
20. cetaka 79.3986
21. sc979 78.7945
22. [TeRa] 78.7573
23. Phynx 78.5989
24. shadow 1800 78.5095
25. HighAndr0id 78.2847
26. Dynam0 78.0533
27. NekoGon 77.9652
28. XPYRYMYNT 77.9367
29. Bahamut-X 77.8845
30. OnDaJohn 77.8181
31. HammyMcSquirrel 77.7929
32. Fantasticone 77.6702
33. Lordd_Magus 77.5471
34. faynt 77.5423
35. behanjc 77.3470
36. powerfull 77.2047
37. lxDestinyxl 77.1319
38. samurai7694 77.0424
39. Loot You 77.0194
40. omgitznpv 76.7846
41. Exag0n 76.7199
42. Popmeister 76.6075
43. Flaming_Dingleberry 76.5599
44. MasterGTS 76.4062
45. dag12 76.2414
46. MP3 player 76.1281
47. Xx{Midday}xX 75.7020
48. scottish 75.5869
49. Oni-Paranoia 75.4359
50. L_eMo_N 75.4169
There are some major limitations to this approach. The biggest one is the use of combo scoring. I tried to calculate "raw goods" by subtracting the actual score from the maximum possible score and diving by 275, but this does not give the true number of raw goods since any combo breaker was penalized much more heavily than it is now. This means there are probably a lot of good non-FC scores that aren't being factored in to this ranking.
Another limitation is that I only included files rated 70+. If any players had files below 70 in their top 15, these scores are not contributing to their skill rating. I did it this way because it would have been too time-consuming to include lower difficulty files. This is most likely not a big deal, since all players in the top 50 are above level 75, so sub-70 scores are probably won't much of a difference in their skill ratings.
Finally, the song leaderboard snapshots came from different times in 2008, based on what was available on the archives. This means the list is not a true snapshot of what the leaderboards would have looked like at any particular time and is just an approximation of what it would have tended to look like throughout 2008.
EDIT:
I managed to find enough archived scores to put together an approximate leaderboard for 2009:
Top players:
1. EAGAMES 92.5071
2. MrRubix 91.9786
3. samtorx 91.8526
4. AOD_ELEMENT 90.1034
5. DossarLX ODI 89.7245
6. leonid 89.4373
7. ~Zero~ 88.7493
8. -Laggy- 88.6535
9. NekoGon 88.5334
10. TC_Halogen 87.8383
11. Sprite- 87.8091
12. Shashakiro 87.6124
13. Phynx 86.9098
14. smartdude1212 86.7467
15. Bluearrowll 86.3433
16. [TeRa] 86.2869
17. gnr61 85.9986
18. roundb0x 85.9195
19. samurai7694 85.9174
20. gameboy42690 85.5503
21. ieatyourlvllol 85.5354
22. darkshark 85.5210
23. omgitznpv 85.2524
24. sc979 85.1048
25. i love you 84.9771
26. One Winged Angel 84.5053
27. BigBoss37 84.3812
28. Moonlight_X 84.2411
29. cetaka 84.2369
30. behanjc 84.1496
31. XXXsmittyXXX 84.0927
32. HammyMcSquirrel 84.0056
33. Izzy 83.7579
34. jimerax 83.7531
35. shadow 1800 83.6472
36. dood gone krazee 83.5324
37. Xiaounlimited 83.4836
38. HighAndr0id 83.3962
39. roundbox 83.1903
40. MasterGTS 83.1086
41. Loot You 83.0038
42. powerfull 82.1878
43. xTitan69x 82.1745
44. Xx{Midday}xX 81.9385
45. Zap_Track 81.9310
46. TK_unreal 81.8333
47. irionman 81.8281
48. MP3 player 81.8056
49. Fantasticone 81.7257
50. omega220 81.7156
1. Find all songs released prior to 2008 that are currently rated above 70 difficulty
2. For each song, find the leaderboards on the internet archive, paste them into a spreadsheet and calculate "AAA equivalency" based on the raw scores
3. Write a Python script to pull in the data and calculate skill ratings for each player
Here is the theoretical 2008 leaderboard I came up with:
Top players:
1. MrRubix 87.5494
2. -Laggy- 85.8754
3. samtorx 85.6778
4. darkshark 85.1022
5. ~Zero~ 83.6960
6. EAGAMES 83.3831
7. ieatyourlvllol 83.2844
8. AOD_ELEMENT 82.5830
9. Shashakiro 82.0424
10. Xiaounlimited 81.6932
11. smartdude1212 81.4742
12. jimerax 81.3495
13. XXXsmittyXXX 80.9958
14. gameboy42690 80.8325
15. Sprite- 80.8097
16. Izzy 80.5302
17. gnr61 80.1907
18. TC_Halogen 79.8391
19. [HectoGtzMX] 79.5178
20. cetaka 79.3986
21. sc979 78.7945
22. [TeRa] 78.7573
23. Phynx 78.5989
24. shadow 1800 78.5095
25. HighAndr0id 78.2847
26. Dynam0 78.0533
27. NekoGon 77.9652
28. XPYRYMYNT 77.9367
29. Bahamut-X 77.8845
30. OnDaJohn 77.8181
31. HammyMcSquirrel 77.7929
32. Fantasticone 77.6702
33. Lordd_Magus 77.5471
34. faynt 77.5423
35. behanjc 77.3470
36. powerfull 77.2047
37. lxDestinyxl 77.1319
38. samurai7694 77.0424
39. Loot You 77.0194
40. omgitznpv 76.7846
41. Exag0n 76.7199
42. Popmeister 76.6075
43. Flaming_Dingleberry 76.5599
44. MasterGTS 76.4062
45. dag12 76.2414
46. MP3 player 76.1281
47. Xx{Midday}xX 75.7020
48. scottish 75.5869
49. Oni-Paranoia 75.4359
50. L_eMo_N 75.4169
There are some major limitations to this approach. The biggest one is the use of combo scoring. I tried to calculate "raw goods" by subtracting the actual score from the maximum possible score and diving by 275, but this does not give the true number of raw goods since any combo breaker was penalized much more heavily than it is now. This means there are probably a lot of good non-FC scores that aren't being factored in to this ranking.
Another limitation is that I only included files rated 70+. If any players had files below 70 in their top 15, these scores are not contributing to their skill rating. I did it this way because it would have been too time-consuming to include lower difficulty files. This is most likely not a big deal, since all players in the top 50 are above level 75, so sub-70 scores are probably won't much of a difference in their skill ratings.
Finally, the song leaderboard snapshots came from different times in 2008, based on what was available on the archives. This means the list is not a true snapshot of what the leaderboards would have looked like at any particular time and is just an approximation of what it would have tended to look like throughout 2008.
EDIT:
I managed to find enough archived scores to put together an approximate leaderboard for 2009:
Top players:
1. EAGAMES 92.5071
2. MrRubix 91.9786
3. samtorx 91.8526
4. AOD_ELEMENT 90.1034
5. DossarLX ODI 89.7245
6. leonid 89.4373
7. ~Zero~ 88.7493
8. -Laggy- 88.6535
9. NekoGon 88.5334
10. TC_Halogen 87.8383
11. Sprite- 87.8091
12. Shashakiro 87.6124
13. Phynx 86.9098
14. smartdude1212 86.7467
15. Bluearrowll 86.3433
16. [TeRa] 86.2869
17. gnr61 85.9986
18. roundb0x 85.9195
19. samurai7694 85.9174
20. gameboy42690 85.5503
21. ieatyourlvllol 85.5354
22. darkshark 85.5210
23. omgitznpv 85.2524
24. sc979 85.1048
25. i love you 84.9771
26. One Winged Angel 84.5053
27. BigBoss37 84.3812
28. Moonlight_X 84.2411
29. cetaka 84.2369
30. behanjc 84.1496
31. XXXsmittyXXX 84.0927
32. HammyMcSquirrel 84.0056
33. Izzy 83.7579
34. jimerax 83.7531
35. shadow 1800 83.6472
36. dood gone krazee 83.5324
37. Xiaounlimited 83.4836
38. HighAndr0id 83.3962
39. roundbox 83.1903
40. MasterGTS 83.1086
41. Loot You 83.0038
42. powerfull 82.1878
43. xTitan69x 82.1745
44. Xx{Midday}xX 81.9385
45. Zap_Track 81.9310
46. TK_unreal 81.8333
47. irionman 81.8281
48. MP3 player 81.8056
49. Fantasticone 81.7257
50. omega220 81.7156
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