What the hell is S rank, anyway?

[Dexiro]

There's a lot of words beginning with S that could describe how awesome you are ;D

Super, supreme, superb, sexy, star or special. Any of those!

 

[Go Fighting In The War Room]

S is Special Rank from what I've heard.

 

[Icecoldcynic]

Nah, it stands for 'Saikyo' which is japanese for 'strongest'.

 

[Logic 0]

I thought it was because they thought A+ was redundunt.

 

[Naheal]

I always thought of it as Engrish: The Japanese saw the S on the front of Superman's outfit and thought "OK, gaijin like S. We give them S."

But I know there's got to be more to it than that.

But most people in localization are normally native speakers...

 

[Lullabye]

I always assumed it stood for "Shut in". As in, you need to get out more.

>_> Damn ninja I was gonna say "S" for Sad, seriously put down this racing game now.

*cough*
As shall I.....right...after....this....LAAAAAAAPPPP! BOOYEAH!
UH, UH! Who's your daddy!
..........I'm done now.

 

[Helios_(DEL)]

its also in naruto used for , S rank missions or S rank ninjutsu, in which naruto has one what ever rating it is its seen as very high and dangerious

 

[ENKC]

I just assumed it stood for 'special' and devoted my mental energy to things that matter.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

I always though of it as "Super."

Granted, I could easily be wrong.

i always assumed it was super as well

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I always though of it as "Super."

Granted, I could easily be wrong.

I always thought of it as Engrish: The Japanese saw the S on the front of Superman's outfit and thought "OK, gaijin like S. We give them S."

But I know there's got to be more to it than that.

lolll

OT: your question does make sense, if your gonna go on a scale, where A is the best letter, and the FIRST letter...why in the hell is S put in front?!?!?

thats like back in B.C. when they were scared shitless what would happen when they reached 1....OH SHIT WHAT DO WE DO?!!?!?

PUT AN 'S' THERE! IT JUST MIGHT WORK!

 

[SimuLord]

I always thought of it as Engrish: The Japanese saw the S on the front of Superman's outfit and thought "OK, gaijin like S. We give them S."

But I know there's got to be more to it than that.

But most people in localization are normally native speakers...

While that's true, the English letter S appears in the original Japanese versions as often as not.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Perhaps the Japanophiles can riddle me this:

What's with the use of the letter S in ranking systems in Japanese games? Every time I've played one it's always seemed to be E, D, C, B, A, S for letter-grade rankings, and I JUST DUN GEDDIT!

At least Mario Kart makes a measure of sense, where if you do better than A, you get up to three stars, and It Is Always Stars. But S? The hell?

Someones been playing Radiant Dawn! It stands for Schutz and when it goes SS it stands for Schutzstaffel.

 

[imaloony]

S usually stands for "Super", "Supreme", or "Special".

 

[tomvw]

I prefer what they use in the DMC games, Smokin', Sweet or Stylish!

Although that may be different from what you're thinking about...

 

[Rasputin1]

Well I've only ever seen S rank in one game.. which was dead or alive 4. But that game also had an SS rank too.. hmm

 

[Enigmers]

"Sexy!"

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

According to my very brief research, it stems from Japanese educational culture, where they don't have A Stars as grades, and anything below a C is complete failure. In order to distinguish people who got 100 percent or more as a result of bonuses they introduced the S Rank. An A is 95% and above, whereas an S is perfection.

Basically ever since then everyone has been trying to determine exactly what the S stands for, when probably it was just chosen at random or as a stand in for the 'official' letter.

In other words, it doesn't mean anything. The same way that technically EA,B,C,D,E,F don't 'mean' anything, they're arbitrary numbering systems.

You might as well make 10 louder.

 

[Vault boy Eddie]

Knowing how perverted japanese are, it's probably sexytime.

 

[go nana go]

A better question:
What does 'A' even stand for?
Things don't NEED meaning.

You don't wonder what the C rank means, or E rank or A rank, they're not words and they have no names.
S looks cool, and If you want to surprise the player with a hidden REAL top rank, you cant have everything stop at b and the big bad is a SURPIRSE! A rank threat, it would be easy to see coming that there is still something higher when everything in the game stops at a B rank. An S rank eliminates this, You don't know if the game uses S rank or not until it happens.

Also, S-rank looks way cooler than A-rank.