The Nintendo Switch 2 is helping Pokémon speedrunners shatter records

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 06/06/2025

The Nintendo Switch 2 has officially released and gamers are quickly discovering the new console’s capabilities.

Nintendo’s latest console boasts significant upgrades and is substantially more powerful.

Thanks to the new hardware, Pokémon speedrunners claim they’re destroying records by as much as 25 minutes.

Anyone who has watched a speedrun knows, every second counts so saving almost half an hour is absurd.

Speedrunners have found the new console saves them five minutes on their previous bests within the first hour.

This is thanks to the free upgrade for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which fixes the game’s lag issues.

That, and the powerful Switch 2 has dramatically decreased the length of loading screens.

The previous world record for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet was 5 hours, 19 minutes.

English speedrunner Crisisaurus had the second-best record, but has now beaten the game on Switch 2 in under 5 hours.

It’ll be fascinating to see if the Switch 2 is at next month’s speedrunning charity event, Summer Games Done Quickly.

The full Summer Games Done Quickly 2025 schedule features a Pokémon Sword/Shield run which could see its time completely change if the Switch 2 is used.

The game didn’t even get an upgrade pack like Scarlet and Violet but players have already reported a five-minute improvement.

Nintendo Switch 2 creates new speedrunning category

Because of the absurd amount of time the Nintendo Switch 2 saves, the console is getting its own category for speedruns.

GretaIceVixen, who will run Pokémon Sword and Shield run at SGDQ, broke the news on speedrun.com saying:

“With the release of the Nintendo Switch 2 imminent, we have added a new annotated variable to all of the Scarlet/Violet categories: the Console variable.

“As we all know, Scarlet/Violet is receiving some performance upgrades on the Switch 2, very likely leading to an all around faster game.

“This new Console variable allows us to keep track of what console was used for each run, so that in the future we may split up Switch 1 vs Switch 2 into their own separate Subcategories if desired by the community.”

Thanks to this, previous records will still be rightfully respected while everyone scrambles to post the best times on the Switch 2

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

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