About Pokémon moves

Pokémon battle using an array of up to four moves. As with the pokemon themselves,each move has a type and various stats, including base power, accuracy and powerpoints (PP - how many times the move can be used).

Moves fall under three categories.Physical andSpecial moves areattacking moves that will do damage to the opponent.Status moves, as thename implies, change the status of a pokemon in some way - for example raising orlowering either the attacker's or opponent's stats, inflicting a burn or causingconfusion.

In the early games, Physical attacks were any moves of the typesNormal,Fighting,Poison,Ground,Flying,Bug,Rock,Ghost orSteel;Special attacks were those having theFire,Water,Electric,Grass,Ice,Psychic,Dragon orDark type.

In Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, however, each attacking move is categorisedindividually: moves of any type can be Physical or Special. So now we have some Fightingmoves in the Special category, Psychic moves in the Physical category and so on. Thishas led to much more interesting and diverse movesets to take advantage of a Pokémon'sstat strengths.