Surf glitch
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. This is one of two glitches officially acknowledged by Nintendo, with the other being the broken escalator.
Performing the glitch
The glitch is accessed due to the door in Aaron's room of the Pokémon League having bad programming, allowing for the player, to use Surf hile facing it if it is selected from the Party screen. This will allow the player to step into the void around the indoors area consisting of the room and walk to another area. Through 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.
Spear Pillar and the Hall of Origin cannot be reached using this glitch due to the fact that the Underground cannot be accessed from either of these locations.
Danger
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.
Remedy
Nintendo has acknowledged the glitch and offered workarounds and methods of recovery. The glitch was removed from international versions of the games; however, tweaking can lead to the same result in these games.
In the case where the player has saved the game while trapped, it is possible to repair the save state with a program that was distributed to DS Stations in Japan starting October 27. The player will be able to resume the game, reappearing outside their house in Twinleaf Town.
If one does not have access to a DS Station, one may mail their DS game card for repair to Nintendo of Japan at this address:
〒601-8501 京都市南区上鳥羽鉾立町11番地1 任天堂株式会社 「お客様ご相談窓口 ポケモンＤ＆Ｐ係」
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This glitch Pokémon article is part of Project GlitchDex, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on glitches in the Pokémon games. |
