A Dragon Quest 3 speedrunner has used a hot plate to overheat the cartridge, in order to cause a bug that starts the party at level 99.
The original Dragon Quest suffered from the fact that it only had one character. This meant that the hero was responsible for being the melee fighter, the buffer/debuffer, and the healer. If he died, then it was back to the nearest church to start over. Dragon Quest 2: Luminaries of the Legendary Line had a party of three characters: the Prince of Midenhall, the Prince of Cannock, and the Princess of Moonbrooke. The three heroes had established classes/roles in the party, and it was difficult to use them in other ways. Dragon Quest 3 Seeds of Salvation was the first game in the series to allow the player to form their own party. There was the default hero unit (who is one of Hero's costumes in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) and they had a role in the story that needed to be followed. The rest of the party was created by the player, and their character class could be changed over the course of the game.
Dragon Quest 3 is a tricky game to speedrun, due to the sheer number of random encounters that the player can expect to face. A speedrunner in Japan has come up with an ingenious way to make the game easier. According to VGDensetsu, the player did this using a hot plate.
The player noticed that heat could affect the save files in the game. By heating the system using a hot plate, they were able to start out at level 99, making all of the fights in the game end in seconds, save for the boss battles. Giving the hero early access to the Holy Protection spell (which they normally learn at level 19) also makes the run go quicker, as they can prevent a lot of encounters from happening.
This technique would be banned in most speedrunning categories, but there are some that allow the use of exploits and glitches. This means we could see even more speedrunners cooking their consoles, in order to shave precious seconds of their world record runs.