Can someone explain the stat "special"?

I recently started playing Pokemon Red. I knew that there was no physical and special moves, but I looked at my Nidoking’s stats and it showed something called “Special”. Can someone explain this to me? I tried looking it up but there weren’t really any direct answers

Pleaselog inorregisterto add a comment.

Way back in Generation 1, what we know today as the Special Attack and Special Defense were combined into one single stat:Special. Because of this setup, if Special Attack was affected at a point in the adventure, so too would Special Defense, and vice versa. As most people can clearly see, this stat was very overpowered in its own right, and Pokemon who best utilized it, including notable examples such as Alakazam, Slowbro, and of course Mewtwo, would become almost as strong as Arceus himself. Because of this issue, Game Freak decided to nerf the stat in Gen II by splitting it into what we know today as Special Attack and Special Defense, forever and ever, in Arceus' name, Amen.

Source: Background Knowledge

The Special stat accounted for what is currently known as Special Attack and Special Defense, determining how much damage a Pokémon both receives and deals when special moves are used.

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