Who Is Gon, and Why Is a Tiny Dinosaur in Tekken 3?
Gon is the title character of Gon, a Japanese manga created by Masashi Tanaka and published by Kodansha. Since 1991, the tiny dinosaur has headlined completely wordless stories about his life among real animals, drawn in lush, realistic detail. Outside Japan, his most famous appearance by far is the PlayStation version of Tekken 3.
He is not part of the Tekken story, has no reason to enter the King of Iron Fist Tournament, and was never in the arcade game. He is a guest, and the story of how he got there is unusually well documented, because director Katsuhiro Harada has told it himself.
THE FACTS
Manga, meeting, licenseTHE FIGHTER
Small target, real teethGon fights nothing like the rest of the cast, because nothing about him is Tekken. He is fireproof, spits fireballs, and attacks with a toxic fart, and his tiny hitbox lets him pass unharmed underneath most high attacks, which made him far more dangerous against the computer than his short reach made him against human opponents. He does not speak, true to the manga: he chirps, growls and shrieks.
Guinness World Records identifies Gon as the first guest character in Tekken history. The guests who followed him decades later, Akuma, Geese Howard, Noctis and Negan in Tekken 7, all came from video games, television or other fighting series. Gon came from a wordless newspaper style manga about the natural world, which is exactly why he still looks like a glitch in the roster select screen.
WHY HE NEVER CAME BACK
The one time licenseNamco never owned Gon. Harada answered the question permanently on Twitter, in words the Tekken Wiki preserves: "Gon is not our Rights. That was one-time license. Plz don't ask about that." The Tekken 3 appearance was a single licensed use, arranged because the creator happened to be a fan and the director happened to know him and knew the character had a following overseas.
That is the whole story, and it cuts both ways. The same one time license that put a manga dinosaur into the best selling fighting game on the PlayStation also means no later Tekken can simply bring him back. Gon is in Tekken 3, only Tekken 3, and only the PlayStation Tekken 3, forever.
THE GAME ON THE SHELF
Tekken 3