PSA: This Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Cheat Code Allows You To Access "Secret" Save Backups (2024)

This could have come in handy when my game crashed when my TRON bike decided to turn into a spider.

”Note: You'll also seemingly need to have the game's autosave set to "Off" in the options menu.”

This seems like quite a big caveat. Surely the most effective way to prevent yourself from losing hours of data is to have this feature set to “On”?

That said, we didn’t have auto save back in the olden days when I was a whippersnapper setting out on my first monster pocketing adventure, so maybe there are still plenty of people who have this set to “Off” — in which case this cheat code would be very useful.

It’d obviously be better if there were fewer glitches and bugs to put your save data in jeopardy in the first place though…

EDIT: Thankfully it seems this isn’t the case. Article amended!

I hope Nintendo Life keeps us updated on any patches for performance issues.

Crashes and glitches. 🤨
I changed my mind of getting Pokemon Violet.

Wouldn't GameFreak have players "covered" better if they had developed a better-quality product that didn't have these issues????

My son fell into water. So the game respawned him back on land. But it picked a slope. So he was in an endless cycle of sliding into the water. Thankfully it eventually just respawned him at the last Pokémon Center he used (which happened to be quite some distance away).

I was expecting to have to force quit right before the cycle break. On the one hand, I was impressed it finally solved the issue. On the other hand, it was an embarrassing issue to occur in the first place.

I dont know whether this is a generous QoL decision or a cynical workaround.

It's a nice feature, regardless, but is undercut by the fact that Game Freak usually isnt this nice about save files.

@Maxz Somehow I got this part mixed up. My bad! Just to clarify, this feature will still work even if you have the game's autosave function set to OFF. Updated the post to reflect this.

This is a nice feature & a lifesaver, hopefully they’re working on fixing the lag and stutter throughout the game, Idc if they lower the resolution to 720p on docked mode & 480p on handheld, just make it run at least 30fps consistently without lags.

I've never understood why more games don't let you do this whenever something unexpected happens to cause the game to crash. This has been a thing ever since the Switch Pokemon games began and by god is it a great lifesaver if you happen to accidentally break something (granted, I've never had it happen to me to verify whether it's amazing or not but I think I should be glad about that above all else).

@Liam_Doolan Thanks for clearing this up!

Turns off autosave then complains about losing data...

Alright chief.

I guess that the problem with having autosave on is... what if it autosaves just after or during a glitch? It could potentially corrupt the save file, and one could lose everything. I have turned autosave off for this very reason... I am just making sure to save regularly.

Wait, This would probably allow for item and Pokemon duplication.. I mean when you trade with someone, then it saves.
But what if you then roll back to your previous save?

In theory the Pokemon you traded should still be in your game. But also in the game you traded it with. And if that Pokemon is holding any items those you also now exist in 2 places.

You just have to make sure the other Pokemon you don't want to duplicate is of no value, because that one will be gone.

Why does this seem more like a debug feature, rather than a helpful thing they put in for the players?

If they only waited just til Xmas release they could've at least got a Day One working game? I learned to Disable AutoSave for that reason so I don't mess up and can retry again.

@Key19 : That's been a recurring fear whenever I get close to water, as I have very little confidence in this mechanic being programmed to be foolproof (with the game being as rushed as it is), and because I can't swim yet, my only way of capturing Pokémon in the water is to throw one of my own to battle with them, and quite often, post-battle, it will spawn me on the slope and drop me in. I've been lucky so far, but I'm still very cautious.

@Anti-Matter same, i do have persona 5 to keep me busy tho but i was excited about this one

@EaglyTheKawaiiShika Standard, perhaps. Annual? What planet do you live on? I don't remember seeing a pokemon release last year...or the year prior actually....In fact I believe its been 3 years since a mainline pokemon game was released. For reference, there was slightly over 1 year between gen 1 and gen 2, but 3 years between gen 2 and 3. I don't know that you can really call it Annual at that point.