Clearing *Ratchet & Clank 3* in 1 Second? This Time, It’s Really Not a Gameplay Legend

Absurd, but not complicated. The core of this new record isn’t skill or tech, but an exploit.

Recently, a new record surfaced in the Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal speedrunning community: a player supposedly completed the game in less than one second. The result was as direct as it gets—the game didn’t go through the normal progression at all, and instead immediately jumped to the credits screen. This wasn’t about compressing the route to its absolute limit; it was about bypassing the game itself entirely.

The issue lies in the PS3 port. What players uncovered was a deeper system-level exploit, not something based on fast inputs or route optimization. Put simply, it takes advantage of the port’s unusual quit-system design, combined with modifying the save file’s timestamp to trigger a specific memory address when exiting. In the end, the game state is forcibly locked into “State 9,” which is the end credits.

After reloading, the entire story progression is treated as completed, so the clear is naturally registered instantly. The appeal of this kind of record isn’t in how entertaining it is to watch, but in how it tears open the underlying structure of an old game for everyone to see. Over the years, speedrunning communities have started to look more and more like archaeological teams—except instead of strategy guides, they’re armed with memory addresses and version differences.

This also conveniently illustrates an old issue: a port isn’t just different in resolution and frame rate; even the underlying system logic that can be exploited may be completely different. For speedrun rules, the original version and the port of the same game are often practically different species. For ordinary players, a one-second clear like this has little learning value; for the community, though, it’s highly valuable, because it forces categories, rules, and leaderboard standards to become even more refined.

If you’re just looking to catch up on this game, don’t treat this kind of record as representative of the actual gameplay experience. It’s simply the product of a PS3-specific exploit, not a shortcut through the intended progression, nor a trick that just anyone can casually reproduce. The original source also didn’t provide the player’s name, the exact time, or a more precise publication date, so for now only one point can be confirmed: this record was broken through an exploit, not through execution.