Pokemon Scarlet/Violet Glitch Lets You Run Twice As Fast With Two Controllers

Plugging in a second controller to make your character run faster sounds like the setup for a bad video game meme. However, that’s exactly what some players have discovered you can do in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, even though the setup is actually a bit more complex than the viral social media posts will have you believe.

As one popular tweet shows, yes, it is true that you can double your character’s run speed in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet by pressing forward on two controllers at once. However, your Switch must be undocked, and you have to use a Joy-Con attached to the Switch, along with a wireless controller.

The game apparently confuses the attached JoyCon and the wireless controller, which allows both controllers to provide input to the character simultaneously. As one reply to the original post shows, this doubled input allows the joystick to go beyond its normal range, thus significantly increasing the speed of the character. We were able to get the trick to work in our testing, though it doesn’t work if you go directly backward or forward, which makes navigation a bit more annoying than usual.

This speedrun-worthy exploit is but one of many issues that Pokemon fans have reported with Scarlet and Violet. While this latest entry in the series has garnered mostly positive reviews, this “open-world” Pokemon experience is marred by significant technical flaws, including low frame rates, visual glitches, and frequent stuttering. However, our critic Jake Dekker still enjoyed the experience in GameSpot’s Pokemon Scarlet and Violet review.