"If You Can't Connect, Raise Your Hand" Technical Issues Plague the Pokemon Community

Since the beginning of the VGC community, Nintendo consoles have always had a way to connect to each other in order for two people to play together. The start of competitive Pokemon began with the ability to connect wirelessly through the internet. Even the GameBoy family of consoles had a link cable to reliably connect to each other. At the start of the VGC’s first worlds, Battle Revolution for the Wii had the ability for two players to import their teams and play on a single console. You would think that in the modern day, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company would have a way to reliably connect two people in a large venue, such as one for a regional or world tournament.

On the weekend of May 25, during the Pokemon Los Angeles Regional Championships, an enormous number of disconnects and system crashes were reported. A tweet from @kareempkmn on Twitter displays an image (referenced in the thumbnail) of a crowd of VGC players raising their hands after they were asked if they were having trouble connecting. This hasn’t been the first time the Pokemon Company and Nintendo have had issues at large events for the competitive Pokemon crowd. Issues that effected the 2023 Yokohama World Championships were widespread. From check-in issues to connection issues and even issues with receiving player’s promo cards that were owed to them, the Switch era of Pokemon gaming has been one that has given headaches to VGC players worldwide.

Rounds 1 and 2 were plagued with connection issues at the 2024 Los Angeles Regional Championships. The stream for the VGC event had such a long waittime between rounds 1 and 2 that they began streaming the majority of round 1 again to fill the dead air. A large majority of Switch devices lost connections that have unfortunately become synonymous with large-scale VGC events. It seems the Nintendo Switch consoles are just not built to handle thousands of Bluetooth connections throughout a venue. An issue many players hope is solved with the next console, a rumored “Switch 2,” that is expected to be released next year.

Errors Glaore at the Pokemon Regionals

the “if you cant connect raise your hand” incident pic.twitter.com/pBShPEXr8t

— kareem 🇵🇸 (@kareempkmn) May 25, 2024

Teamsheet errors are no stranger to Pokemon's official streams.

Regulation G is still very early in its meta, but Miraidon and Calyrex-Ice Rider dominate the top-used Pokemon, along with impressive early meta rankings. Tofu has a table with a rundown of all the top Regulation G Pokemon on Devon Corp Press that you can read here. On stream, there have been minor errors before on teamsheets, and the Los Angeles regionals are no exception. A teamsheet error on stream mistakenly named Miraidon, “Miraidon Ultimate,” which does not exist in any shape or form. This is assumed to be a stream error and not a written teamsheet error on the player’s end.

As Pokemon players pave their way to the 2024 Hawaii World Championships, many pray to the RNG gods that disconnections and system crashes do not continue at such a wide scale as the regionals in Los Angeles. 

Game crashes continue to affect the competitive integrity of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, interrupting this match on stream at the Los Angeles VGC Regional Championships #PlayPokemon pic.twitter.com/N0AvkcVZaH

— Leonard Craft III (@DaWoblefet) May 25, 2024

This isn’t even a matter of whether the hardware or software exists to handle this large number of systems in one place. Much older consoles had wired solutions to prevent these kinds of issues. From the USB link cables of the GameBoy era to the LAN solutions of the OG Xbox gaming age, there is no excuse for the most profitable franchise of all time to lag behind in network technology. Nintendo has no excuse to have a system that does not have the proper capabilities to handle connections on such a large scale. Here’s to future events and future systems having stability going forward.

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