Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Have Some of the Funniest Bugs I’ve Ever Seen

Another year, another pair of Pokémon games that sell millions of copies while a vocal chunk of its fanbase criticizes them and still play anyway. Even by their own standards, the recently released Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are huge financial successes, marking the second biggest launch in series history, outselling every entry besides Sun and Moon. They may also be some of the buggiest titles Game Freak has put out.
Although it’s common for these games to be picked apart over lackluster animations and unimpressive environment design, as well as their generally strict adherence to an established formula, the latest releases seem to be in a league of their own when it comes to technical problems, and clips of bizarre and often hilarious bugs have taken over my Twitter feed. Let’s run down a few of the strangest.
To start with the less funny problems, there appear to be severe performance issues, especially in handheld mode:
oof the reviews arent kidding about the terrible performance #PokemonScarletViolet#NintendoSwitchpic.twitter.com/0oDvYQmMqV
— cherrim @ pkmn scarlet (@Cherrim) November 17, 2022
Here we see pop-in issues, as the background blinks in out of existence, and the game struggles to maintain its framerate. According to the speedrunner Linkus7 these sorts of problems become worse the longer the game runs, likely due to a memory leak, which is when a program fails to manage memory resources properly. Restarting should alleviate this bug somewhat.
Luckily, at least from an outside perspective, most of the other issues are much goofier. For one, there is a tendency towards accidental body horror, as character geometry warps in unexpected ways:
???????www
#????SV#NintendoSwitchpic.twitter.com/K0d8YUY5Fz— (@t_a_b_e_r_u) November 18, 2022
Here is another character in desperate need of an exorcism:
????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/VxDskfTBdt
— GENIUS | (@Nata3Pit) November 19, 2022
A selfie gone wrong:
GameFreak deserves a round of applause for this one pic.twitter.com/EhCPt1qAXg
— Strat (@LaidbackStrat) November 18, 2022
While speedrunners are usually able to find unintended ways to get around, it seems like it’s a little bit easier to discover them here than in most. ZullieTheWitch, everyone’s favorite FromSoftware hacker, found one:
This is probably the silliest, but most useful trick in Scarlet/Violet. You can easily get up slopes you’re not supposed to by just going backwards. pic.twitter.com/RRwveA1m9j
— Zullie (@ZullieTheWitch) November 20, 2022
A particularly weird case is if you plug in two controllers, you can use both at once to increase your run speed:
Apparently in the new pokemon, if you plug in two controllers at once you can run twice as fast. Like you hold both joysticks and it just… adds the speed
these devs had NO TIME lmao pic.twitter.com/q8ydxd9iub;
— Muno (@munosnail) November 20, 2022;
And then there’s also a bunch of issues with wall-clipping, which are probably less endearing if it means getting stuck and losing progress:
This is normal. #PokemonScarletViolet#NintendoSwitchpic.twitter.com/UWpy25CKC1
— Kraken Mare (@KrakenMare77) November 18, 2022
Maybe this one will be useful for speedruns, at least?:
“Scarlet and Violet aren’t unfinished.” #PokemonScarletViolet#NintendoSwitchpic.twitter.com/cYJmsAiQsp
— jkid101094 (@jkid101094) November 19, 2022
But trainers aren’t the only ones subject to the jank, and unsurprisingly there are plenty of Pokémon mishaps as well:
FUECOCO NO pic.twitter.com/ILKPYaBYLg
— Pokemon Gems (@PokemonGems) November 19, 2022
Fuecoco can’t seem to catch a break:
FUECOCO NOOO #PokemonScarletVioletpic.twitter.com/9YkSiXHWKb
— General Scales (Luke) (@GenerousScales) November 18, 2022
Another starter going through it:
what da cat doin pic.twitter.com/Nt2o1YmzIv
— Out of Context Pokemon (@OoCPokemon) November 20, 2022
And tragedy:
OH NO pic.twitter.com/bYKh3dynNT
— Out of Context Pokemon (@OoCPokemon) November 19, 2022
While places like Lavender Town have ensured the series is never too far removed from paranormal happenings, the new game is particularly haunted:
Just a clip of Pokemon Violet working as intended pic.twitter.com/beKVzMnSuF
— jacob alpharad (@Alpharad) November 18, 2022
There’s also ghost bikes:
LMAOOOOOOOOO THIS GLITCH pic.twitter.com/I9Y8qwHHgC
— Out of Context Pokemon (@OoCPokemon) November 19, 2022
Uh, a lot of ghost bikes:
— Pokemon Gems (@PokemonGems) November 18, 2022
?????www #????SV#NintendoSwitchpic.twitter.com/snIvUiuIZa
— RHG/???????????? (@namaashibikyaku) November 17, 2022
And saving the best for last:
Was ugly laughing for ten minutes, I think this is the greatest bug I’ve ever seen #PokemonScarletViolet#NintendoSwitchpic.twitter.com/oDwVTLISVk
— Domer Simpson (@Ianzilla_) November 19, 2022
These are just scratching the surface, and there’s plenty of more weirdness to be found, as is shown in this thread, as well as with Kotaku’s findings.
Every new Pokémon release seems to bring about a swirling vortex of painful takes, such as fans becoming obsessed with how the trees look and played out criticisms of devs being lazy, to more level-headed complaints regarding these games’ design issues and technical limitations. The latest has resurfaced worries about the Nintendo Switch’s dated hardware specs, while others have countered that the game’s problems are due to Game Freak’s limitations as a studio or the series’ rushed production pipelines. Some are even comparing this release to that of Cyberpunk 2077, although I don’t think expectations were the same between the two (another pair of entries in a series constantly drawing criticism vs. a heavily anticipated title from a much-beloved studio).
And despite all the issues with Scarlet and Violet, it seems many are still enjoying it, in large part because of the series’ rock solid foundations. At the very least, I’m having a good time watching the jank unfold:
This is how co-op is in scarlet and violet pic.twitter.com/ksYlLBpasF
— FINCH @ where to now? (@finchbites) November 19, 2022