Ratchet & Clank

• 1. Introduction

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  Ratchet & Clank began with a reptile. Early sketches for the hero of Insomniac Games' new PlayStation 2 adventure showed a reptilian alien. Artists eventually settled on a feline humanoid and gave it a species name, Lombax, which the studio's CEO Ted Price invented. That mechanic and his small robot companion, Clank, went on to anchor a flagship series for Sony. The games mix platforming with third-person shooting, and the pair roam the universe stopping villains who keep threatening it.

  This documentary asks how a studio known for another series found a hero of its own. It asks how that studio kept reshaping its formula without losing what players loved. It also asks what happens when a flagship series pauses, returns as a film tie-in, and then arrives on a new console.

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• 2. Escape From Spyro

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  In 2000, as Sony announced the PS2, Insomniac Games had just finished Spyro: Year of the Dragon, the third game in its Spyro series. The studio did not own that series, because Universal Interactive Studios did. Insomniac wanted a property that belonged to it, and the new console gave the team a reason to start fresh.

  A prototype called Monster Knight never advanced beyond the prototype stage. A second idea, Girl with a Stick, was meant to blend The Legend of Zelda with Tomb Raider. That one absorbed about six months of work before Price cancelled it. Director Brian Allgeier later explained the decision this way: "the team wasn't feeling it."

  By 2001 the studio was still struggling for ideas. Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings then proposed "an alien that travels from planet to planet, collecting weapons and gadgets." He drew on Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes and on Marvin the Martian. The premise energized the team because every new planet could hold new worlds and new characters.

  Clank started life as a childlike version of C-3PO from Star Wars. The team reconsidered and picked a buddy cop film as the model instead. That choice made Clank an equal partner to Ratchet rather than a sidekick. The first game reached North America on the 4th of November 2002.

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• 3. Adapt Or Die

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  Writer TJ Fixman felt the 2002 original had made its hero a jerk. So when the team planned the second game, they revamped Ratchet to make him more relatable. They also hired James Arnold Taylor to voice him. Developers spent extra time on weapons, hoping combat would become as enjoyable as the platforming.

  Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal were both well received and counted as commercial successes. Allgeier credited that success to constant evolution. Mascot-driven games were falling out of favor, and the company had adopted what it called an "adapt or die" mentality for each title.

  That mentality produced Ratchet: Deadlocked in 2005. Inspired by the popularity of Halo and Grand Theft Auto, the team made the game darker and more focused on combat. Ratchet and Al are forced into an underground bloodsport called DreadZone by the media mogul Gleeman Vox. For the first time, Clank stays out of most of the campaign and has no playable sequences.

  Critics liked Deadlocked, but players did not warm to the change. The game drifted from the buddy cop idea, offered less exploration, and had less comedy in its writing. Insomniac kept struggling to balance the series' core "DNA" against its adapt-or-die habit. A new console generation would soon give the studio a chance to rethink that balance.

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• 4. Weapons And Gadgets

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  Ratchet begins every game armed only with his Omniwrench, a multipurpose tool used for melee attacks. Everything else arrives through missions or purchases from a weapon vendor. Ammunition is limited, so players must ration firepower and restock from vendors or by smashing crates. Arsenals range from machine guns and sniper rifles to transformation guns and decoy launchers.

  Going Commando in 2003 introduced the system that shaped every later entry. Using a weapon often enough upgrades it into a stronger version with new abilities. The original game had no such system. Instead, players hunted for hidden Gold Bolt items and a secret area, then paid to buy gold versions of selected weapons. Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal also let players carry over a previous save file, which gave returning weapons for free or at a discount.

  Gadgets matter as much as guns. The Grind Boots let Ratchet slide along rails. A Swingshot, a portable and reusable grappling hook, lets him swing across gaps. Other devices distract enemies, and some open locked doors after the player finishes a puzzle minigame. Clank rides on Ratchet's back like a backpack and supplies jumping, hovering and diving abilities. In some missions he directs small robots called Gadgebots through areas Ratchet cannot reach.

  Bolts serve as the currency throughout. Skill Points reward a task hinted at only by the name of the Skill Point, and they pay out extras such as concept artwork or outfits for Ratchet. Most games add a Challenge Mode after the story ends, with tougher enemies and bigger rewards. Tools of Destruction later required a rare resource called Raritanium to buy certain upgrades.

  The weapons escaped the series entirely. In Gearbox's shooter Borderlands 3, a rocket launcher named R.Y.N.A.H. winks at the R.Y.N.O. weapons that Ratchet fans know well.

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• 5. The Future Saga

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  Resistance: Fall of Man, a PS3 launch title from 2006, became Insomniac's training ground for new hardware. The company did not push the game engine hard. With that experience behind it, the studio aimed to make its next Ratchet & Clank game play like an animated movie. It brought Fixman on to write, and he set out to organize the disjointed mythology of the first four games and deepen the characters.

  The result was a trio of games called the Future saga. Tools of Destruction arrived in 2007 and returned to what players had loved, earning praise apart from its cliffhanger ending. In that ending the mysterious Zoni abduct Clank. The team had dropped a planned co-operative element, and the unfinished business pushed Insomniac to make a quick follow-up. Quest for Booty, released digitally in 2008, was shorter and experimented with devices such as conversation trees.

  Planning then turned to A Crack in Time, which Insomniac designed to hold everything players wanted. After the credits of Quest for Booty, a message promised that the quest would continue in fall 2009.

  In that game, Clank learns that a Zoni named Orvus created his soul. Clank becomes the caretaker of the Great Clock, a device that controls time. Meanwhile Ratchet meets General Alister Azimuth, an elder Lombax who unintentionally caused his kind's downfall by letting Tachyon use their technology.

  A turning point comes when Azimuth, furious at Ratchet's refusal to risk the Great Clock, blasts him with a wrench and kills him. Clank locks Azimuth out and reverses time by six minutes, following advice from a plumber who had warned him not to risk more than that. Azimuth later breaks in, sets the Clock to rewind to Tachyon's rise to power, and fights the heroes as the final boss. Defeated, he stops the rewind at the cost of his life.

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• 6. Experiments And Side Trips

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  In 2009, A Crack in Time was a hit, and Sony pressed Insomniac to carry on. The developers, however, were tired of the series. Sony also worried that mobile gaming was pulling players away from family-oriented titles, so Insomniac tried several new concepts.

  All 4 One, revealed at Gamescom on the 17th of August 2010 and released in 2011, was a fully co-operative shooter. It let players control Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark or Dr. Nefarious, with drop-in, drop-out play. Some platforming vanished along the way. Full Frontal Assault, announced on the 30th of May 2011 as a surprise for the series' 10th anniversary, added tower defense. It spread five levels across three planets and reached the PS3 on the 27th of November 2012.

  Into the Nexus in 2013 went back to the core elements, introducing gravity-based platforming and 2D puzzles in a realm called the Netherverse. It was considered a short game. Sony and Insomniac then agreed to put the series on hold.

  During those years other studios kept the characters active. High Impact Games, composed partly of former Insomniac employees, made Size Matters for the PSP, released on the 13th of February 2007. It sends the duo after a kidnapped girl named Luna and a forgotten race of inventors called the Technomites. Their second game, Secret Agent Clank, made Clank the playable star while Ratchet sits wrongly imprisoned, and it added stealth sequences.

  Mobile phones had their own entries. Before the Nexus, an endless-running tie-in released on the 19th of December 2013, let players collect Raritanium and sync it with a PlayStation Network account for upgrades in Into the Nexus.

  The oddest story belongs to Clone Home, a J2ME phone game by Javaground. It was cancelled before its planned release on the 1st of September 2006. An encrypted copy turned up in December 2021 on a Sony Ericsson W880i. It was decrypted in October 2025 and posted on archive.org after nearly two decades as lost media.

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• 7. Heroes And Villains

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  Captain Copernicus Leslie Qwark calls himself the Solana Galaxy's superhero, but he is really a cowardly blowhard whose ego creates trouble for Ratchet and Clank. He began as the secondary antagonist of the first game and the main villain of Going Commando before turning ally. Jim Ward voiced him from 2002 to 2021, after which Scott Whyte took over. Ward's last turn in the role came in the short film Life of Pie, shortly before his retirement and his death in 2025.

  Doctor Nefarious, played by Armin Shimerman, is a robotic mad scientist with a deep hatred of organic life. His butler Lawrence is shrewder than his pompous master. Under stress, Nefarious freezes up while radio episodes of a fictional soap opera called Lance and Janice play inside his mind. He stays frozen until someone whacks him behind the head.

  The Plumber is a running gag who usually appears with his rear end sticking out of whatever he is fixing. He is missing from Ratchet: Deadlocked, but the credits explain that he was called away to a "sump pump emergency in the Rygylian Nebula." Neil Flynn voiced him in the first three games, and Jess Harnell took over later.

  Emperor Percival Tachyon was raised by Lombaxes. When he learned they had banned his race from the universe, he did the same to them. Lombaxes come from the planet Fastoon and have four fingers and a thumb on each hand, unlike most species in the games' universe. Ratchet's father, Kaden, kept the Dimensionator and refused to flee with the others, after sending his infant son to the planet Veldin to hide him.

  In the 2016 game, the Plumber leaves Ratchet and Clank with a sly remark: "See you in the next reboot."

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• 8. Screens And Sequels

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  On the 29th of April 2016, an animated Ratchet & Clank film reached theaters after a delay from its planned 2015 date. It had been announced in April 2013. The production involved Rainmaker Entertainment, the company behind the television series ReBoot, and Blockade Entertainment Studios. Fixman wrote the script. Taylor, David Kaye, Jim Ward and Shimerman returned for their roles, joined by Paul Giamatti, John Goodman, Bella Thorne, Rosario Dawson and Sylvester Stallone.

  The film retold the first game's story, so Sony wanted a companion game. Insomniac produced a remake released on the 12th of April 2016 for the PS4, delayed to match the film's date. Critics and fans worried that it lost humor, edge and tone and left some character development thin. Even so, it became the fastest-selling game in the franchise.

  Across the series, aggregate review scores run from 54/100 to 91/100 on Metacritic. The first three games earned critical acclaim, and none of the core games has scored below 76/100.

  The next entry took five years. Rift Apart was revealed at the PS5 Future of Gaming event on the 11th of June 2020 and arrived in 2021. In it, the heroes cross different realities to stop Doctor Nefarious from exploiting a catastrophic dimensional collapse. A Windows version appeared on the 26th of July 2023, ending the series' PlayStation exclusivity.

  The characters traveled well beyond consoles. A manga drawn by Shinbo Nomura ran in the Japanese magazine CoroCoro Comic from February 2004 to February 2008. Wildstorm published a six-issue comic series from September 2010 to February 2011. Ratchet and Clank also became playable in Fall Guys and Among Us.

  On the 12th of November 2025, developer Oh BiBi announced Ranger Rumble, a free-to-play multiplayer arena shooter for iOS and Android, which soft-launched in select regions that month.

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