If, like me, you were a little surprised at how fuzzy the Switch 2 version of Pokémon Champions looks on a TV at launch, it's because of a strange issue that runs the game at a lower resolution until you remove the console from its dock.
The trick - which I discovered thanks to Joe Merrick of Serebii - involves starting Pokémon Champions, removing the Switch 2 console from the dock, then reinserting it again. Once you do, the resolution gets a boost.
You can see the differences in the below video, which was captured in 4K then zoomed in on elements like text, textures and moving characters:
The difference is slight, but for Switch 2 owners hooked up to a 4K display, it's enough that I'd recommend performing these steps every time you boot up the game.
It's such a strange bug that I had to find out more - so I asked friend of the site Tom Morgan over at Digital Foundry as to what's happening.
"It's true, Pokemon Champions runs natively at 1920x1080 when booting Switch 2 in docked mode," he said. "All signs point to a bug that has the game run in a 'portable state' even when connected to a TV. The problem is made more egregious by the lack of aliasing treatment to the image overall - meaning its rough, jagged edges are scaled from 1080p to 4K to disastrous results.
"The fix works well of course: lifting and re-docking your Switch 2 gives the system the necessary trigger to flip to native 3840x2160 - but still it's an issue that needs attending to."
Tom added "it's the first time" he's seen this behaviour from a Unity Engine game, though the team has also encountered the opposite before.
"Though from memory, funnily enough, Payday 2 had a reverse problem on the original Switch (at launch anyway) - that had its portable state running at its docked resolution (1080p)."
Following yesterday's launch (on 8th April), the Pokémon Champions development team has said it is already addressing several issues, including an incorrect item description and quirks with Mega Evolutions (see Nintendo Life for details), but no mention about this particular graphical bug so far.
I've reached out to The Pokémon Company about the Switch 2 dock issue, and will update if there's any comment.
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