Is Beat Up a physical or special move back in Generation 2 and 3?

Question

According to Bulbapedia, Beat Up's damage is determined using each attacking Pokémon's base Attack and level and the target's base Defense. However, back in Generation 2 and 3, all damaging Dark-type moves were special. So does this make pre Generation 4 Beat Up a physical or special move?

Comments

I don't think moves were ever officially categorized before gen 4. There were just some moves that used physical stats to calculate damage, some that used special stats, and some that used neither (like sonic boom).

Answer 1

I don't think that Beat Up pre-Gen IV was coded as a Dark-type physical move. However, I believe that the reason why Bulbapedia says that it uses physical Atk and Def is because the damage was typeless, which probably was probably physical.

This part is more speculation than concrete fact, but Beat-Up during that time likely was designed to make it seem like you're calling upon the other party members to attack. So rather than the Move being an Attack Move, it's more like a Status move that generates an Attack move for every party member. Rather than just being a multi-hit move, it's a multi-hit Metronome that chooses only one move. While it's categorized as a Dark-type offensive move, the specific coding must've made it disable the regular attack and skip to the weird typeless one.

Comments

It's definitely not a status move because it's not affected by taunt.

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@sumwun They were drawing parallels to moves such as Metronome and Assist, which also call other moves (and from the party members in the latter's case) and are status moves, if I'm correct.

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Yes but just because beat up is similar to a few status moves doesn't mean it's a status move.

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My current conclusion is that it's just a weird effin move no matter what it is.