This Bug Is Letting You Play Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Faster Than You Think
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are talked about all over town, but not for the reasons Nintendo probably wanted. While many are enjoying their new Pokémon adventures, all the tweets are about how buggy the games are . These glitches range from funny to quirky and hilarious . But there’s one quirk that’s unlike any other – the hidden ability to run faster than you should.
As demonstrated by Redditor hamsterhead64 , by connecting a second Joy-Con to the Switch while playing Pokémon Scarlet or Violet , you can significantly increase your running speed in the Paldea region. With both controllers connected, you need to push both left sticks at an “angle” (meaning any position other than straight up, down, left, or right) and you’ll see your character armor faster than Keemstar .
The game isn’t necessarily designed to let you run that fast, which is why you might notice that the game is trying its best to keep up with you. Wild Pokémon might not spawn in time for you to run past, though as one Reddi user notes , “you don’t have to run fast for that.” Ouch. It’s certainly not a hack that justifies spending $40 on one new Joy-Con , but if you have another Switch controller, be sure to give it a try.
Of course, this is most likely not a bug that you will discover on your own. Pokemon multiplayer doesn’t happen on the same Switch. Whether you’re trading monsters, fighting friends, or teaming up to complete quests, everyone uses their own game and console, so why think about plugging in another Joy-Con right now?
However, the more pressing question is why this bug even exists. One compelling theory comes from Redditor Pulley999 , who suggests it has to do with how Game Freak encodes joysticks: According to their suggestion, the game reads the joystick position map as a square, not a circle, with four separate corners. impossible to reach. However, use two angle sticks at the same time and all of a sudden the game will think you’re in those angles, potentially allowing you to move 41% faster than normal.
Another user points out that the new Pokémon Snap has the same feature, leading to speculation that Game Freak is reusing code from that game in these new games. Another says they developed a game with a similar bug in a high school computer science class. The whole branch is read with pleasure.
In fact, however, we don’t know for sure what is causing the error, and we don’t know if Game Freak will fix it in a future update. With that in mind, you should run while you still can.