Summary
An upgrade forPokémon Scarlet and Violethas been released on the Nintendo Switch 2, taking advantage of the console’s increased capabilities compared to the original Switch.
It’s well-known that playing Scarlet or Violet on the Switch is not always an enjoyable task. The game is plagued with bugs and performance issues, and you get the impression that Game Freak never quite mastered the console’s limitations.
Specifically, the update improves the game’s frame rate and visual quality, which includes adjustments to the render distance and more. It’s essentially what Pokémon Scarlet and Violet should have been if the pair were optimised for the original Switch.
Unlike the Nintendo Switch 2 versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, there is no additional charge to “upgrade” to the new version of Scarlet and Violet.
Gotta Go Fast
An interesting consequence of this update is its effect on Scarlet and Violet’s speedrunning community. Theworld recordfor speedrunning the original Switch version of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is 5 hours, 19 minutes by Halqery.
Within a couple of days of the Switch 2’s release, the world record had been improved by over 30 minutes. This didn’t happen because of any new tech discovery or anything like that, but simply because the new version runs much smoother, allowing players to move through the game faster (thanks,Automaton).
The new world record is 4 hours, 50 minutes, also held by Halqery. We’ll likely continue to see this number drop as runners master the new optimisations offered by the Switch 2 version. Speedrunner Carolio, second place on the global leaderboard for the original Switch version, said they managed to shave off 30 minuteseven when their play was sloppy, emphasising just how much time save these upgrades enable.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are far from the most popular Pokémon speedrunning games, as runners prefer the intricacies of older generations. In those games, you can perform tricks such as RNG manipulation to guarantee more consistent runs, something speedrunners always gravitate to regardless of the game.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s update is now available for Nintendo Switch 2 owners.
