Gotta Review 'Em All - Moves [Generation IV, Part 2]

My coverage of Pokemon moves introduced in Generation IV, part 2! Not a whole lot for me to say in the intro, other than the reminder that Generation IV was the one that introduced the Physical/Special split, meaning that a lot of the moves added is just in service to balancing out the other side of that split for most types. 

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Flying-type Moves:

Originally all Physical-type, 'Flying' is probably the type that gets the most splitting between the existing moves since the Flying-type always had a decent amount of moves themed around striking like a predatory bird (which fall into Physical-category moves) and wind-related moves (which fall into Special-category moves). 

• Air Slash (Ea Surasshu/Air Slash) ...which goes straight into these first couple of moves I'm going to talk about! Air Slash is a very neat fantasy that has been represented a couple of times in Pokemon as moves, with the not-particularly-useful Air Cutter and the highly impractical Razor Wind. Air Slash is very simple, very practical, and looks amazingly cool in animation as your birds just strike the air hard enough that a compressed blade of wind flies at the enemy like a thrown weapon! Pretty cool. 
• Brave Bird (Bureibu Bado/Brave Bird) We're just giving Double-Edge to every type in this generation, huh? With Wood Hammer and Flare Blitz and now Brave Bird? I've always found the animation of Brave Bird (which is shared with Sky Attack of 'God Bird' in the 3D games) to be cool as hell, as your Flying-type Pokemon flies up to the sky and conjures this manifestation of a glowing yellow giant predatory bird that just swoops down and slams onto the enemy like a goddamn fighter jet. Needless to say, one of the more powerful physical Flying moves.
• Pluck (Tsuibamu/Pick) Basically the exact same thing as Bug Bite, but flavoured as a bird picking the berry off of the opponent. I do find it cute that certain things that some animals do on their own that might seem innocuous could be translated as a certain attack with a certain effect in this franchise. 
• Chatter (Oshaberi/Chatter) We'll get through all the damaging moves in one go, and Chatter is Chatot's signature move, which has such an interesting history behind it. You see, Chatot is a parrot, and the fourth generation debuted in the Nintendo DS era, which had a built-in microphone. The damage that Chatter does -- and the secondary effect of confusion -- ends up being tied to the decibel of volume of the recording that you, the player, puts into the NDS itself. It's such an interesting gimmick tied to the signature move of an honestly rather bland Pokemon, but the sheer amount of calculations involved in Chatter in the NDS-era games is honestly quite impressive. Chatter can also be used outside of battle to record a sound clip that would replace Chatot's cry. A combination of the games moving into other consoles, however, meant that Chatter was reduced to just a generic move... but I think banning it really just meant it stopped people from recording "FUCK YOUUUUU" really loudly.

• Roost (Haneyasume/Feather Rest) Speaking of 'birds doing bird things', Roost! Roost is always a fascinating move to me. Generation IV and V are the generations where I feel like they're really trying to add more functionality to some of the more neglected types like Bug, Poison and Flying, and Roost basically kind of became a staple move for a lot of Flying-type Pokemon. A bird roosts on a tree or a rock to rest, and this translates to healing half of the Pokemon's health. Of course, this comes with an interesting drawback -- Roosting removes the 'immunity to certain moves' that Flying-type Pokemon have, and this might end up causing hilarious things as the Kilowattrel that just roosted would suddenly find its life being rocked by an Earthquake. 
• Tailwind (Oikaze/Tailwind) Another one that I really like with a fun name, Tailwind summons a gust of wind that blows on your side of the field, increasing the speed of not only the Flying-type Pokemon that casts it, but also its allies in a double battle. It's such a fun little imagery, and this move is shared by a bunch of non-Flying Pokemon that has some association with the wind, like Suicune and Whimsicott.
• Defog (Kiribarai/Fog Wipe) Debuting in this generation and one of the much-reviled 'Sinnoh has too many HM's' complaint, Defog removes the 'foggy' weather effect that's never tied to any in-game move (unlike Sunny Day, Hail, Rain Dance, Sandstorm or Snowscape) but is just tied to the areas in Sinnoh and Hisui. So a Flying-type Pokemon will just flap their wings hard enough to clear the fog, I guess? Defog in battle isn't as useless as Flash is, though, because not only does it lower the enemy's evasiveness, it also gets rid of both shield moves (Reflect, Light Screen) but also entry hazards (Spikes, Sticky Web, etc). While I really do like the idea of using your party Pokemon's physical abilities to transverse the terrain instead of turning the HM's into 'plot coupons', I definitely agree that Defog is probably the HM that felt the most 'why'.

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Fighting-type Moves:

As you can imagine, literally every single damaging Fighting-type moves from the first three generations are categorized into the physical category since they do involve a lot of punching and kicking. This generation gives us some of the first Fighting-types that can utilize special-category Fighting moves (notably the iconic Lucario) but also adds a bunch of moves to facilitate that. 

• Aura Sphere (Hadodan/Wave Bomb) Again, the most iconic of these is Lucario's highly-marketed Aura Sphere -- a hadodan instead of Street Fighter's iconic hadoken. I get the idea, it's something a lot of fighting games do where you compress a large amount of ki or fighting spirit or something equivalent to those and then launch it as a blast of pure energy. Aura Sphere ties in with concepts that are explored around Lucario, which is its ability to sense the enemy by sensing their 'aura', which is a pretty martial arts thing to do. Now it's not Lucario's signature move, with Togekiss and a handful of legendaries also being able to learn it even in its debut generation, but I do find the move tied to an interesting 'extra sense' give it an extra oomph. Besides, it definitely gives Lucario that extra 'oomph' where his hadoken attacks are very visually distinctive!
• Vacuum Wave (Shinkuha/Vacuum Wave) Originally only learnable by Hitmonchan of all Pokemon (though HG/SS and Platinum made it available to much more Pokemon) this one is a bit of a more 'sci-fi' Special-category Fighting move, where the Pokemon punches so hard that it... blows away all the air and unleashes a blast of vacuum at the enemy. It's a priority move, though, and doesn't cause explosive decompression or whatever. 
• Focus Blast (Kiaidama/Fighting Spirit Bullet) And the 'Blizzard' of Fighting-type moves is Focus Blast, a kiai bomb where you just launch a blast of fighting energy at the enemy. Powerful but inaccurate, and all that. It is interesting, however, that the only Pokemon that learns Focus Blast naturally is Yveltal, who isn't even a Fighting-type Pokemon! 

• Wake-Up Slap (Mezamashi Binta/Awakening Slap) An interesting move that is taken from a common trope in anime. You slap an unconscious or sleeping person so hard that they wake up. I think this might've been the original concept for the move Smelling Salts in Generation III? Anyway, Wake-Up Slap deals double damage to a sleeping target, and also wakes them up. Kind of a niche move because your opponent sleeping is almost always a better thing for you than a very slight boost in damage. 
• Force Palm (Hakkei/Force Discharge) Oh, I like this one. It's that move that so many animation studios use to give their action scenes an oomph -- striking the enemy so hard that an explosion of energy bursts out from the back of the opponent. It's like... you hit the enemy with such force and energy that the force travels through the enemy's body and it erupts out the other side! Hakkei, or Fa Jin in Mandarin, is a concept of dealing internal damage through shockwaves. Very fun little move!
• Hammer Arm (Amu Hanma/Arm Hammer) This one is kind of the late-level moves for Fighting-types as far as damage goes, with a base 100 power but not a perfect accuracy. You also decrease the user's speed, which means most people just run the slightly-less-accurate Cross Chop (which has a bonus of increased critical hits) or... 
• Close Combat (Infaito/Infight) Close Combat! Or just the English word 'Infight' in the original Japanese version. One of the most widely-available Fighting-type moves, and honestly kind of terrifying to see? The animation for this move always tends to be pretty hectic, too, with the user charging in and blitzing the enemy very quickly. The tradeoff is that you lower your Special Defense stats by going in so 'close' to the enemy. I like this one.
• Drain Punch (Dorein Panchi/Drain Punch) I've always found the idea of this move rather bizarre, actually. A lot of the Fighting-type moves refer to relatively specific moves in martial arts like judo, boxing, karate and wushu... and yes, I know I just talked about Aura Sphere and Focus Blast up there and that draws more on Dragon Ball and Street Fighter than on MMA, but this one is a bit more odd for a Fighting-type move. You punch the enemy and you restore health by draining their energy? I dunno. That really doesn't sound like something that particularly fits the 'flavour' of Fighting-type moves all that much. 

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Ground-type Moves:

• Earth Power (Daichi no Chikara/Earth Power) Huh, only two new Ground-type moves? Earth Power is very crucial, though. The Doylist explanation for this is that the Ground-type needed a powerful Special move to be a counterpart to Earthquake... but the flavour's pretty neat even if it's technically the same thing. Earthquake's more about the shaking and moving of the ground itself, whereas Earth Power is the Pokemon channeling the sheer power of the ground to cause a gigantic volcanic eruption of... well, tectonic plates, I guess? It's really hard to explain this animation without using the words 'stone' or 'lava', which implies other types!
• Mud Bomb (Doro Bakudan/Mud Bomb) It's not that the Ground-type didn't have moves that got categorized into the Special category -- but Mud Shot and Mud Slap really weren't the most impressive ones. Mud Bomb ends up becoming the middle-of-the-pack move, and like all the 'mud' moves, it has a chance of lowering accuracy. It sure is a dense ball of mud being launched at the enemy!

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Rock-type Moves:

It is interesting that I've never noticed until when I did these move reviews how few Rock-type moves there are in the first three generations, despite the abundance of Rock-type Pokemon. We had a total of seven Rock-type moves in the first three Generations, and that's it, when we're already doubling up on redundancy in some types like Fire and Normal! So yeah, we have a fair amount of new Rock-type moves here, some which will become staples. 

• Power Gem (Pawa Jemu/Power Gem) The only Special-category Rock-type move we had before was Ancient Power, and Power Gem was basically made to fill in that gap. Depending on the generation, the user either summons a cluster of gemstones and launches them at the enemy, Magneto-style, or summons four floating diamonds that shoot laser beams at the opponent. By dint of lack of any other options, this one ends up becoming pretty widely available among Rock-types, I think.
• Stone Edge (Suton Ejji/Stone Edge) This is the huge-damage, low-accuracy move for Rock-types, basically the Fire Blast to Rock Slide's Flamethrower... though the Rock-type, sadly, doesn't quite have that high of a base damage power compared to those two specific Fire-type moves. Always loved Stone Edge, though. There's just something so satisfying, particularly in the 3D-era games, to see a cluster of spiky, vertical rocks just rise up and impale the opponent. 
• Head Smash (Moroha no Zutsuki/Double-Edged Headbutt) Kind of a 'shared' signature move, only the Cranidos line and Relicanth could learn this move. It's a very powerful move with 150 base power, but it has subpar accuracy and deals a lot of recoil. It kinda makes a lot of sense that the self-destructive headbutting Rampardos can learn this one, then! 
• Rock Polish (Rokku Katto/Rock Cut) Oh, hey, Rock-types get a self-buffing move! Rock Polish basically has the Rock-type Pokemon polish its body to 'reduce drag', according to the description. It increases the Speed stat a lot. Not much to say, it's pretty cute as far as moves go and what kind of association they would draw for the Rock flavours to turn into a buff move. 

• Stealth Rock (Suterusu Rokku/Stealth Rock) Ah, good ol' Stealth Rock. The 'staple' meta move of entry hazards and what dominated the metagame in Generations IV and V before VI nerfed entry hazards a bit. Hey, I know a little about the meta! Stealth Rock isn't the only entry hazard out there -- there's also Spikes and Toxic Spikes -- but Stealth Rock is able to hit even flying Pokemon and even deals damage based on typing, meaning it's even more powerful against Flying-types. The flavour is even pretty cool, speaking in anime terms... a bunch of floating stones set around the opponent, that will all swoop in and dig into the enemy's flesh as they enter? That's so much more badass than just a bunch of caltrops on the ground! Later games would even make the 'stealth' part a bit more clearer by having the floating rocks go invisible. 
• Now interestingly, this portion of the review was written after I played Legends: Arceus -- some of the previous reviews were not -- and only in that game, Stealth Rock is turned into a physical attacking move that has the user launch the rocks at the enemy, leaving them with a 'splinters' damage-over-time for several turns. I'm not sure if I like or dislike that game changing a fair bit of how moves work, since Stealth Rock is probably one of the more drastic changes, but it's interesting for sure. 
• Rock Wrecker (Ganseki Ho/Rock Cannon) Originally the signature move of Rhyperior, and later shared only with Dwebble and Crustle, Rock Wrecker also has the gigantic 150-power damage. And hey, look at Rhyperior! It's literally a giant rock kaiju dinosaur with cannons built into its arms. You would think that a 'Rock Cannon' fired from this thing would do a fuck ton of damage. And it does! It's just that, just like Hyper Beam and Giga Impact, Rock Wrecker demands that the Pokemon misses its next turn... and 'recharging' in this case makes a bit more sense because Rhyperior needs to probably 'load' its next cannonball, right? 

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Steel-type Moves:

As one of the types introduced a bit later into the franchise, the Steel type does have a fair amount of catching up in terms of moves alone, and particularly in terms of Special category moves -- the only Special category move before this was Jirachi's Doom Desire, whereas a lot of the 'sci-fi beam' flavour moves like Zap Cannon were typed as Electric instead. So we do have a couple of brand-new ones, like:

• Flash Cannon (Rasuta Kanon/Luster Cannon) Okay, what the hell, 'Flash Cannon' is catchy, sure, but 'Luster Cannon' sounds so much more badass! Anyway, this is the endgame Special-category Steel-type move, being accurate and having a chance to lower Special Defense. Kind of like Shadow Ball. Now how exactly do you attack 'specially' with Steel-type, when the Steel type usually stab and whack people with blades and girders? Short of vomiting metallic bars at the enemy, obviously. Flash Cannon just 'gathers all the light energy and launches it at the enemy', which basically means a metallic-coloured beam. Um, okay, then. 
• Mirror Shot (Mira Shotto/Mirror Shot) Another Steel-type special move, this one is nothing to write home about, being inaccurate and relatively weaker. It's kind of interesting that the description of this move talks about how it's launching a 'flash of energy from its polished body', which means that the Pokemon that can use this move are ones with glossy metallic bodies like Klinklang, Magneton, Ferrothorn... and Vanniluxe? Okay?
• Bullet Punch (Baretto Panchi/Bullet Punch) Okay, I don't really know why, but 'Bullet Punch' just has such a badass ring in my head. BULLET is just one of those words that has a bite to it, y'know? And Bullet Punch is basically always depicted as punching so fast that you strike multiple times... and somehow this his you like the Steel impact of a bullet. Very cool! This move is a priority move, meaning that like Quick Attack and Aqua Jet, it goes before other moves. 

• Gyro Ball (Jairo Boru/Gyro Ball) It's interesting. I don't know (and don't care to research) too much about Physics to know how well this works, but Gyro Ball basically has your Pokemon spin around and rotate like a gyroscopic... uh... thing! And then it rams the enemy! It's Steel-flavoured Rollout! The kicker is, Gyro Ball deals more damage the slower your Pokemon is, despite the description of it as a 'high-speed spin'. I'm sure someone can point out the obscure centrifugal or centripetal or whatever force that this is referring to, but I just like this move because I really like Ferrothorn as a slow-ass metal durian it's one of the best Pokemon to utilize this one. 
• Iron Head (Aian Heddo/Iron Head) Not much to say here, type-plus-anatomy moves never really gave me much to talk. This is a typical move where it's a perfectly accurate move that also has a chance of flinching. It's Headbutt, but with a little bit more metal to it? Eh. 
• Metal Burst (Metaru Basuto/Metal Burst) I genuinely didn't know this move existed until literally right now. Metal Burst is basically a Counter/Mirror Coat style move, where it returns damage with much greater power, but it does so regardless of the category of the move. It's... it's a bit... it's cool, from a 'let's talk about how to give Steel types more variety in their moves' aspect, for sure, but the flavour of this in animations tended to just be the Steel-type launching a metallic beam at the enemy without any real flavour the way Counter or Mirror Coat has. I dunno. 
• Magnet Bomb (Magunetto Bomu/Magnet Bomb) ...hold up, this is a physical move? Um? Only learnable by a small group of magnetic Pokemon (Magneton, Probopass, Genesect), Magnet Bomb has the user launch a bunch of black spherical orbs that magnetize themselves to the enemy and then explode. The magnetization means that these bombs will not miss. I guess the flavour here is that the magnetized spheres striking the enemy as they get drawn with electromagnetism is the 'physical' aspect of it? 

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Psychic-type Moves:

You really do get the vibe that Generation IV, with the jump from the Game Boy Advanced to the Nintendo DS, that the GameFreak team really tried to do a lot of wacky stuff and a lot of it ends up being slotted into the Psychic type. There's like maybe three brand-new damaging moves, and two of them are the Physical-category move to contrast the mainly Special-flavoured move of the Psychic type. 

• Zen Headbutt (Shinen no Zutsuki/Thought Headbutt) The premier Physical Psychic-type move, mostly because... there aren't really too much in terms of other physical Psychic move, which in itself is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? Zen Headbutt only really gets away because it has the 'zen' word in it that kinda-sorta falls under the realm of being tied to the esper vibes of the Psychic type. 
• Psycho Cut (Saiko Katta/Psycho Cutter) Psycho Cut, though, I can get behind a lot better. I associate this the most with Gallade, obviously, as one of the first dedicated physical-leaning Psychic-types, but a lot of other Pokemon even in Generation IV can use it. A compressed psychic blade isn't too much different than a compressed air blade, but it's so much more flavourful and fancy! 
• Gravity (Juryoku/Gravity) And now we get to the wacky moves that really interact with each other. It's a bit weird that Gravity falls under Psychic-type instead of Steel or Electric, since it's more of a 'sci-fi' power, but the idea of using powerful telekinesis to really intensify the natural forces of the universe does feel like something that psychic characters like Jean Grey or Professor X or Tetsuo would do. The effect nullifies all flight, including levitation, disables moves that requires flying (not just limited to Fly or Bounce, but also High Jump Kick and Magnet Rise) and somehow... increases accuracy of every Pokemon in the field? Hmm.  
• Healing Wish (Iyashi no Negai/Healing Wish) A move that I really felt should've been retconned into Fairy-type, Healing Wish has the user make a wish... then faints, and fully cures the next Pokemon in. Yeah, you never really want any Pokemon to faint, and just like Memento, this one falls under the realm of 'too huge of a risk, too little of a reward'. 

• Trick Room (Torikku Rumu/Trick Room) One of my favourite moves, and, for two generations, a move only naturally learnable by Porygon-Z (the TM made it widely available, though), Trick Room ends up creating a space -- usually represented by a mass of checkerboarded walls all around the area -- where the turn order is reversed, with slower Pokemon going first and faster Pokemon going last. But priority moves are still maintained! It's wacky, it's tricky, it's gimmicky, it's the sort of lunacy that I felt is extra fun when you're playing with your friends. 
• Power Trick (Pawa Torikku/Power Trick), Power Swap (Pawa Suwappu/Power Swap) and Guard Swap (Gado Suwappu/Guard Swap) A trio of moves that also do a lot of wacky rejiggering, but... I really do think that these are way too situational to use properly. Power Trick swaps Attack and Defense stats; while the two swap moves swaps the respective changes to the stats with the foe. Power Trick is honestly really only useful for Shuckle shenanigans, since it's a Pokemon with an abysmal Attack stat and insane Defensive stats, while the 'Swap' moves... well, they're not useless -- you can theoretically steal an enemy's Swagger buff while also delivering a debuff caused by Overheat that you used before, but what an effort to find someone who can survive that many turns and have that exact coverage of moves, y'know? They definitely feel like more of a concept-of-proof of something more creative but perhaps not the most practical to use in battle. 
• Miracle Eye (Mirakuru Ai/Mracle Eye) Okay, this one is kinda boring, it's just Foresight/Odor Sleuth flavoured as a miraculous eye. You can hit Ghost-types and Pokemon with evasive moves. Honestly, 'Foresight' already feels like it should've been a Psychic-type move in the first place.

• Heal Block (Kaifuku-fuji/Restore Seal) Kind of a reverse-counterpart to 'Imprison' if we go by its Japanese name, "Heal Block" has the flavour of restoring a broken seal... but the English name, this time around, really explains the move a lot more clearly. It just blocks the enemy from using healing moves for 5 turns. 
• Psycho Shift (Saiko Shifuto/Psycho Shift) They really did give Psychic a bunch of healing moves this generation, huh? This is basically the 'Synchronize' ability turned into a move -- Psycho Shift uses psychic power to literally shift a status condition to the enemy. The idea, of course, is to maybe use a Burn Orb or whatever to self-inflict a status condition, but it's a bit niche instead of just learning Toxic or Will-O-Wisp. And this move ends up sadly becoming a bit less useful as the sixth generation introduced a lot of status condition immunities to types associated with them. 
• Heart Swap (Hato Suwappu/Heart Swap) The signature of Manaphy, and later on shared with another legendary Magearna, Heart Swap is honestly not the most interesting move. You swap stat changes with the enemy, which isn't super-useful. Lore-wise, though, it represents Manaphy being able to literally swap the souls and minds of people in a 'Freaky Friday' style thing. Why is this given to a sea slug angel water prince? Why not, I guess?
• Lunar Dance (Mikazuki no Mai/Crescent Moon Dance) Cresselia's signature move, Lunar Dance is a very interesting move in that Cresselia dies in order to restore the HP and PP of whatever Pokemon comes to take its place. Now flavour-wise, I think this means to represent Cresselia coming in a dream and curing people from the nightmares they suffer from her rival Darkrai? But in-practice, healing-mid-battle isn't something super useful, and most certainly not worth fainting one of your party members! It's unique, but I don't think anyone really missed Lunar Dance when Legends: Arceus gave Cresselia a brand new signature move. 

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Dark-type Moves:

Dark is really interesting because the type was entirely Special in the previous generations, but thanks to the physical/special split, every single damaging move introduced in Generations II and III have been recategorized as Physical... and the majority of Dark-type moves would still be Physical afterwards, since the Dark type would lean far more into the 'fighting dirty' trope as opposed to the 'shadow darkness powers' which, other than a couple of specific moves, are all Ghost-type. 

• Dark Pulse (Aku no Hado/Evil Pulse) Oh, hey, speaking of the shadow darkness powers, here's Dark Pulse, the premier special-category Dark-type move. For most of the earlier generations, it's been portrayed as a concentric blast that radiates out of the user, dealing AoE damage in multi-battles... though the anime (and recently, Scarlet/Violet) tends to depic it as a blast of warbling black-red-purple energy instead. It sure is an evil beam!
• Night Slash (Tsujigiri/Crossroad Killing) Its English name is pretty cool, 'Night Slash'. Pretty neat! A relatively high-damage Dark-type move, with a high critical hit ratio, noted in the description as a slash done when an 'opportunity rises'. The actual Japanese context, though, is that tsujigiri refers to a way that a samurai would test out his blade in feudal Japan, where they would hide near a crossroads and wait for unsuspecting commoners (who's of a lower class, and thus legal for them to kill) and then behead them, testing how well their new sword can cut. That's... a lot more evil than a simple slash in the night! 
• Assurance (Dameoshi/Make Sure) One of those moves that really works off a pun in Japanese, the term 'dameoshi' is based on a term in baseball translated into English as an 'insurance run', where an already winning team continues to go for score to make sure they really win. And the term dameoshi can also be translated as 'useless push', hence the animation. The effect works off of it, where the move deals extra damage if the Pokemon already received damage earlier this turn -- something that's mostly practical only in double battles. 
• Payback (Shippegaeshi/Retribution) A bit of a discount Counter or Bide, Payback is a regular damaging move that has doubled power if you can use it after bein hit by an attack. Not too much to say here, it's mostly a damaging move a Dark-type Pokemon learns in the middle of the road. 
• Punishment (Oshioki/Punishment) Another 'hurt the enemy more if they're hurt' move, Punishment deals more damage if the enemy is affected by a status condition. Like Payback and Assurance, it's not really a particularly powerful move on its own, though. 
• Sucker Punch (Fuiuchi/Surprise Attack) ...and here's my favourite move, and one that I feel show up a lot in the meta? Sucker Punch will strike first, but only if the enemy has selected a damaging move. So it's a priority move that's a bit of a gamble, punishing your enemy if they're going for a damaging move (and sometimes taking them out, if you built your Pokemon right) but you yourself get punished if the enemy instead goes for a setup move like Swords Dance or a debilitating move like Will-O-Wisp. Very fun, and definitely this sort of 'evil scheme sometimes gets rewarded' vibe that the Dark-type has. 

• Embargo (Sashiosae/Seize) A cute move. The Pokemon sends out a chain and the enemy can no longer use items anymore. Again, just like the many Psychic-type moves above, they are really trying to make a lot of the wackier interactions happen with these moves. Not all of them work, of course, because again, it's much better for your Dark-type Pokemon to run, like, an extra type coverage or a buffing move instead of a wacky move like Embargo... but it's still cute that it exists. 
• Fling (Nagetsukeru/Throw) Speaking of interacting with items, we've got Fling! The Dark-type has already previously interacted a lot with items with Thief, but Fling is the opposite -- you literally chuck the held item at the opponent. And Generation IV gave us a specific item that realistically only works with this move, the Iron Ball, which deals a base 130 damage. That's a lot of damage! Other items that you might've seen me mention that self-inflicts status effects like Toxic Orb and Flame Orb will also deal extra effects to the enemy.
• Switcheroo (Surikae/Secret Switch) Well, this is exactly the same as Trick from Generation III, where you swap items with the opponent. The idea, of course, is to steal their beneficial item while passing over your, uh, Flame Orb or something. The only reason this is a separate move from Trick is the flavour, I guess, where this is shown as one of those scammy ball-and-cup games. 
• Nasty Plot (Waru Dakumi/Sinister Plot) Otherwise known as the Special-attacking Swords Dance, the Pokemon basically thinks up of some nasty plot to hurt the enemy, hence buffing it. I love it. I love that the flavour of this isn't as epic as dancing like a blade or calming your minds and emptying it of impure thoughts, or to put up a shield of metal... but just think of a prank, and go hee-hee-hee. 
• Dark Void (Daku Horu/Dark Hole) And we close this off with Darkrai's signature, Dark Void (or Dark hole in Japan), where it used to be pretty overpowered -- putting both enemies to sleep with a pretty high accuracy of 80%. And Sleep's a very debilitating status effect, even before considering that Darkrai has his signature ability, Bad Dreams, which just eats away the health of all sleeping Pokemon around it. It does really work with the flavour of Darkrai being the legendary Pokemon of nightmares, but it has since been nerfed not only to have reduced accuracy (a much more fair 50%) but, interestingly enough, can only be used by Darkrai (or a Ditto transformed into Darkrai), preventing Smeargle shenanigans! I didn't look into every legendary Pokemon signature move to see if this is the case, but I do like that certain abilities are really only be able to be used by certain legendary Pokemon. 

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Okay, that was a lot! Generation IV, thankfully, is the last generation to introduce a gigantic amount of moves. Generation V ahead should, god willing, be a lot more quicker for me to get out. Generations III and IV are the hardest for me to write, really, mostly because I tried (and honestly kinda gave up) on trying to analyze the repercussions of the physical/special split.