Players have recently been discovering how to run faster in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet by using two controllers. According to a variety of different reports, pushing forward on both left sticks will make the player character move twice the normal speed.Pokemon Scarlet & Violet was released earlier this week on November 18, 2022 to fairly positive reviews, but widespread reports of bugs and glitches affecting gameplay. The speed hack is only the latest in a long line of glitches currently existing in the game. While the developer, Game Freak, has not yet acknowledged the problem, fans of this incredibly popular franchise have been taking to social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit to spread the word, sometimes in criticism, but occasionally with a certain amount of amusement.“Oh, no, it works,” the journalist Dave Breens remarked earlier today on Twitter in confirmation of the rumor. “So, it actually disconnects player two controllers, but the Joy-Cons connected to the Switch are basically player zero, so you can only do it with one extra pad and cons connected to the console.”The user on Reddit known as Hamsterhead64 broke the news yesterday, noting that “in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, you can greatly increase your running speed by connecting a second controller and using both left joysticks at an angle.” When asked if adding a third or fourth controller would further increase movement speed, the user going by the name of Pulley999 replied “most likely not. Joysticks have two analog axes, X and Y ranging from -1 to 1. Together, they're used to represent the unit circle. Due to the circular housing, if you push the stick at a diagonal, neither the X or Y axis can reach their full extensions.”
The bugs and glitches have resulted in a somewhat rocky launch for Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. The former currently has a user score of only 2.8 on Metacritic based on 860 reviews, one player scoring the title zero and commenting that “everyone giving that game more than 5/10 points is straight up lying. The game is the worst running game I've played in 20 years.” Another player settled on 2/10, calling the game "barely playable on Switch Lite.”