Surf glitch
From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
The Surf glitch is a Generation IV glitch best known for enabling the capture of the promotional legendary Pokémon Darkrai and Shaymin. Arceus cannot be obtained through this method since Arceus is not in a location from which it is possible to get to the Sinnoh Underground.
The glitch is accessed due to the door in Aaron's room of the Pokémon League having bad programming, allowing for the player, while facing it, to use Surf if it is selected from the Pokémon menu. This will allow the player to step into the void around the indoors area consisting of the room and walk to another area. Though this, with steps easily countable using the Pokétch, the player can walk to Newmoon Island and the Flower Paradise, finding Darkrai and Shaymin there available for capture without the need for their respective event items, the Member Card and Oak's Letter. Following the capture of the Pokémon, the player can merely Fly or Teleport back to a normally-accessible area and resume playing normally.
If the Member Card or Oak's Letter is obtained in the game at a later time, neither Shaymin nor Darkrai will regenerate, and so this is for naught. So far, the Mystery Gift events for these items have only been available to players of Pokémon Platinum, from which this anomaly was removed, perhaps because of the lack of need for the event in Diamond and Pearl.
The player is unable to reach the Hall of Origin using this glitch, as, although it is programmed into the game as a separate area than Spear Pillar, the Underground cannot be accessed from either of the locations. Though there is no way of reaching Arceus, there is likewise no danger in finding oneself stuck on a glass ceiling above Spear Pillar.
Danger and remedy
Venturing into the void provides for some interesting and potentially hazardous consequences to those who would exploit this glitch. As the area has not been programmed properly, since the player would normally not be able to access it, it runs the risk of causing the player to get stuck forever. Saving outside of the boundaries of a building or in the Mystery Zone may cause corruption of game data, including the loss of the save file completely, with the player required to start their game anew.
Nintendo has acknowledged the glitches and offered workarounds and methods of recovery. The glitch was removed from English and international versions of the games, however, tweaking can lead to the same result in these games. Platinum addresses both glitches in all versions of the game.
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