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, although the setup is actually a bit more complex than viral social media posts would have you believe.
Apparently, in the new Pokemon, if you connect two controllers at once, you can run twice as fast. Like you have both joysticks and just… add speed these devs didn’t have TIME lmao pic.twitter.com/q8ydxd9iub
— Muno (@munosnail) November 20, 2022
As a popular tweet shows, yes, it’s true that you can double your character’s running speed in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet by pressing two controllers at the same time. However, your Switch must be undocked and you must be using a Joy-Con attached to the Switch, along with a wireless controller.
In case anyone is curious, this is likely what’s going on: joysticks actually have a square range of values, not just a circle. Usually though it’s limited by both hardware (the circle around the stick) and software (1/?) pic.twitter.com/pOUIqSUptv
— Osha 🏳️⚧️ | #DragaliaForever (@Oshamoff) November 20, 2022
The game apparently confuses the attached JoyCon and the wireless controller, allowing both controllers to provide input to the character simultaneously. As a reply to the original post shows, this duplicate input allows the joystick to go beyond its normal range, thus significantly increasing the character’s speed. We were able to get the trick to work in our tests, though it doesn’t work if you’re going straight back or forward, making navigation a bit more annoying than usual.
This speed-worthy exploit is one of the many problems Pokemon fans have reported with Scarlet and Violet. While this latest entry in the series has garnered mostly positive reviews, this “open world” Pokémon experience is marred by major technical flaws, including low frame rates, visual glitches, and frequent stuttering. However, our reviewer Jake Dekker still enjoyed the experience in GameSpot’s Pokemon Scarlet and Violet review.
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