New Pokémon Scarlet & Violet sandwich glitch transcends the final frontier

Hoopa, we have a problem

I don’t need to tell you that Pokemon Scarlet & Violet are buggy games. I personally encountered several funny glitches without even trying, let alone the many hilarious oddities shared on social media. The bar for newsworthy bugs in Scarlet & Violet is astronomically high, yet one emerging glitch clears all expectations with approximately 300,000 feet to spare.

Trending on Japanese social media is the hashtag “サンドイッチ爆発学“ which Google translates as “Sandwich Explosives.” This refers to a specific bug that activates by starting a picnic on the top level of a lighthouse in West Province (Area One). If you position yourself just right, you can clip your table into one of the pillars. The game won’t stop you from making a sandwich in this state, and if you toss enough chorizo sausages into the pillar protruding through your plate… well, this happens.

パルデアの世界と地球がみれた　#サンドイッチ爆発学 #ポケモンSV #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/pQ71VhJJax

— ゆーだい (@yuudainano) March 3, 2023

Look, Final Fantasy XIV players will go out of their way to make their camera zoom out like this. It’s pretty nice of Game Freak to give us such in-demand functionality without the need for third-party tools.

サンドイッチ爆発学はこんな事も出来る学問です、皆様のサンドイッチ爆発お待ちしてます！#サンドイッチ爆発学 pic.twitter.com/Cfqs0pwnDB

— ライラック　🍇🍊DLC前編クリア！ (@hamupiyopiyo) March 10, 2023

Where no Pokemon has gone before

As astronomically goofy as this glitch is, it has led to some amusing discoveries. For example, the earth actually changes color depending on the time of day. That said, this bug is pretty hard to pull off. After about an hour of trying to get the trick to work myself, I could only get slight camera manipulation. It takes a lot of effort just to set up a picnic at just the right angle, let alone toss your sausages in the proper intervals. At best, my results leaned closer to “one small step for man” than “one giant leap for mankind.”

For as many issues as Pokemon Scarlet & Violet have, I can’t stay mad at this one. You have to go so far out of your way to make it work, and it doesn’t impact gameplay. There are reports that this glitch can cause the game to crash, but that’s the worst of it so far. I’m not saying Game Freak has an ethical obligation to leave the great space sandwich bug in the game. However, if it gets patched out before Scarlet & Violet can maintain a stable framerate, I’ll be sending a very angry letter with at least three angry emoticons.