Player performance rank (ConceptTopic, 4)

From Compile Worlds

The player performance rank is a concept that frequently crops up in video games that are split into discrete stages. The idea is to take some measure of how "well" the player did, for example in terms of points, enemies killed, fluency of movement, and of course some inverse measures like time taken and damage taken, and use some formula to put all this information together into a discrete ranking system, usually using the ranks S, A, B and C, from best to worst (though many will extend this scale at one end or the other... or both).

Known games using a ranking system

• Many newer Sonic games. They have always had ring and time bonuses, but more recently introduced ranks which combined these.
• Dance Dance Revolution and similar games, which have a scale going down to E, and going up to SS. Some games, including StepMania, even added SSS, to cope with the addition of "marvellous" judgement.
  • Keiji however decided to modify these to P and M ranks respectively (named after the "perfect" and "marvellous" judgements required to obtain them), because multiple-letter ranks just look silly.
• .hack//G.U. uses them, but Keiji doesn't know the specifics since he hasn't actually played the games himself.
• Puyo Puyo games since Puyo Puyo! 15th Anniversary and beyond have also used ranks, but it's pretty easy to S rank the entire game in one sitting.
  • Pretty much every other SEGA game uses rankings too, with Crazy Taxi using the word "license" to replace "rank"
• VVVVVV uses B, A, S and V (of course) for its Time Trial ranks.