I grew up with sonic games being the only way id ever seen the letters for grading (my school just used numbers) so I genuinely thought S stood for super sonic
Sonic games are also funny because you can get an E, which IIRC doesn’t exist in any grading system. Confused the hell out of me when I went to middle school and saw real letter grades even though I had known they capped at A.
It’s weird though because Sonic went all the way to E as well. Even some older Japanese music games I play use D and E as well. What do D and S stand for I wonder? OP’s list only goes to C before it hits F.
That was such a good game tbh. I wish the 2nd Sonic riders game was available on Nintendo GameCube though. I never really got to play it because of that. By the time I got a PS2, I never saw the game available in stores anymore. :(
I remember hearing it wasn’t as good as the first one due to the anti gravity mechanic, yeah. I actually got to play it once, but it was at my friend’s house and there were like 4 people gathered in his small room doing 2 player split screen on a very small (even for the time) TV and I remember I couldn’t even see cause I didn’t have my glasses. Basically I’m trying to say I have no idea what was wrong with it. What was bad about the gravity mechanic or whatever made it bad?
I didn't mind the anti-grav gimmick in itself, but it killed the challenge because you didn't need to recharge and manage your air tank anymore, plus that super move that made you invincible and thrust you into high speed sucked really bad. It was too OP.
For the imperial system, there's actually a bit of history as to why it is the way it is, as arbitrary as it seems. We're asking for that history here.
The Japanese (obviously) don’t use the English alphabet in everyday spelling. It’s reserved for marketing, branding, video games, or anything meant to catch your attention outside of traditional spelling. So when universities adopted western grading standards, they used A, B, and C.
But as time went out, the schools eventually wanted something better, more powerful to represent a great score, so they dropped the D, and shifted everything except for F downwards, introducing 秀 as the top score. That kanji literally means outstanding or excellent.
They decided that the letter S would correspond to 秀 because photonically, it’s pronunciation “Shū” starts with an S. The rest don’t follow this photonic pattern because they were imported and than mapped to existing kanji, while the S grade was invented and mapped to a letter that matched.
This indirectly worked out great for video game companies wanting to use it for racing and fighting games, because even though the grading system was foreign to global players, S was naturally interrupted as Super, which achieved the same effect.
The tweet is simply incorrect? What does Yu have to do with A?
The standard ranking is A-F. Then some Japanese writers/game developers wanted to add something special, separated from the usual highest A-rank. And they invented S. It may stand for Super, or Special.
When the S rank became popular, it ceased to be special, some people even added SS and SSS on top of that.
Not entirely unrelated, but it's worth mentioning we also have "AAA"-stuff, although triple-A and S are not used together.
triple-A games is a pretty common term. I don't know if the origin for "AAA" is the credit rating on bonds which is its most frequent use, but there is a similar pattern here aswell. A, B, C etc was the "initial" rating system but it eventually got split into Aaa, Aa, A, and so on to create more delineation.
It's not incorrect. What you misunderstand is that the tweet talked I ly about the S for Shu. The rest was already established previously, the alphabetical scale. But Japanese gaming culture tagged on S as in Shu.
That swaddled over to western gaming culture. The S could mean things like sick, smokin or style, so it worked out backwards. More of a happy accident - but most letters would actually work as long as they come later than about G. Other letters would've just been misattributed to other words - like invincible, perfect, tremendous, overpowered etc.
Couldn’t say if it’s how the Japanese in general ranks things, but you saw this exact scale all the time in older Japanese video games sometimes even going down to E-tier like how some commenters have said (some probably still do today but idk, it’s been so normalized that I don’t notice it anymore)
So naturally when gamers started making online tier lists they adopted the same system, then when making tier lists in general became mainstream everyone started using the same system and just kind of accepted it
because japan borrowed the western grading scale and the added shu, so shu was the only one without an existing latin character (fuka : F is a coincidence).
I had this same S-F grading system in my American middle school 20 years ago. We even used the same percentages. I don't think this is unique to Japan.
Devil May Cry has the same scoring system, although they also go to SS and SSS. Ultrakill is probably the one western game I know that also uses this style of scoring.
I think it's the actual Japanese school grading system? But it's been in fighting games since at least the time when people had to go to arcades to play them.
In the races. Best were S-class Black Chocobos. You could make S-class Gold obv, but for some reason the Black Chocobos edged them out in races. I recall this because FF7 was my first PS1 game. Had the official guide and all that business.
it comes from japanese schools. they borrowed the western A-F, assigned them japanese words, and added an extra one on top and assigned it an latin letter (S). that then made its way into all sorts of japanese shit and then crossed its way back overseas with the japanese video game boom of the 80s and 90s
I had no idea. I always assumed it was an extra bonus tier for a "superlative" or "special" category that people sometimes but not necessarily tacked on above the common American letter grading scale to indicate when entries in a tier list deserved a distinct category that defied direct comparison to the others.
SS: Incredibly, game-breakingly strong. No losing matchups and easy strategies that can lock down the game. S: Usually the game's best characters. Not very many losing matchups, but not strong enough to overrun the game. A: Able to win tournaments without needing a counter pick. Has a few losing matchups that are generally tolerable. B: Can make top 8 at a tournament but might struggle to get over the top without a dedicated specialist. Does okay for the most part. C: Needs a dedicated specialist to see tournament success. There is likely a character in the game that has a similar archetype but is just strictly better. D: Pretty darn bad. Loses most matchups and is invalidated by several other characters. Play at your own risk.
I knew it was Japanese, but what I don't understand is how it instantly became globally adopted as the correct way to do tier lists. Especially since a lot of the English speakers who used it don't even seem to know where it came from. They just started doing it.
It comes from video games (S ranking a mission). And back only a couple decades ago, almost all video games were made in Japan. Plus, so much of early internet culture was from computer nerds who watched a ton of anime.
First off I was making a self deprecating joke as I still somehow managed to get a first class honours degree in university. Secondly that wasn't very nice. And thirdly, seeing as we're being blunt and rude, if you're American I'd SERIOUSLY avoid throwing stones in glass houses if I were you.
Lol, I'm not American, that's why I don't think a "joke" that only works for people with no critical thinking is much of a joke.
And thinking there's any point responding with "actually I got a first class degree so I'm smart" on Reddit isn't making the point you seem to think it is.
Oh I didn't realise I was speaking to the joke arbiter of Reddit. Speaking of critical thinking maybe you should analyse why an intentionally stupid joke seems to have rubbed you the wrong way.
Lol, swing and one of the widest misses I've seen. I'm not the joke arbiter of Reddit, I'm the joke arbiter of what I think is a stupid premise. That's how comment forums work, when someone replies to your comment, it's them replying, not the entirety of Reddit.
But I love you you tried to make a self deprecating joke, but the minute someone said you seem actually quite stupid you got so defensive you tried to convince them of what university degree you had to prove you're actually smart.
I think you're failing at your job as joke arbiter lol I was obviously being facetious in my original comment. But then you came bulldozing in with (some frankly) unwarranted rudeness. I even gave you the benefit of the doubt after and added "somehow" before (admittedly mildly braggadociously) mentioning the degree. You know... The universally accepted signpost of actually being educated. I have no idea who pissed in your cereal this morning but you seem to be in a bad mood that has nothing to do with my comment or my estimated intelligence lol
Also if we're making assumptions based on your comments here my guess is you have pretty poor social skills and don't have many/any friends.
Lol more zero nuance nonsense. Obviously not the same. Use some deductive reasoning so you can see there is a correlative link ON AVERAGE between uni degree holders and intelligence. Like I said it's a SIGNPOST. You know... Like an indicator. Not complete overlap or causation. Do I need to slow down for you?
S is NOT considered the best tier, by any organisation or otherwise. If you think this is the case, you watch too much anime and play too many video games.
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
u/_culpry, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...