Eddy Gordo - Character Development

Character Development

The Tekken 3 development team wanted to include a Capoeira practitioner for Tekken 3 and turned to the development artists to create the character. It was desired by Masahiro Kimoto, one of the game designers of Tekken 3, that the Capoeira character be female but the artist that was tasked with the character's design deemed the female character too difficult to create and instead created Eddy. Kimoto later stated that his favorite character from Tekken 3 was Eddy, because of the challenges in his development.

Marcelo Pereira, a Capoeira master from the Brazil, was the motion capture artist for Eddy Gordo in Tekken 3. Pereira stated that Namco had heard of him as a result of his 1995 International Capoeira Seminar held in San Francisco, and that he felt honored in being chosen by Namco to represent Capoeira in Tekken 3. Marcelo Pereira reported that during the development of Tekken 3 he had been injured, as a result the acrobatic movements he performed were restricted. He also claimed that he performed "about 20%" of what he was capable of performing because it was necessary to have "another skillful capoeirista" to perform some movements in Capoeira. Additionally, Pereira criticized Namco's naming choices for Eddy Gordo and his moves, noting that Eddy is not a Brazilian name and that "Gordo" in Portuguese meant "fat" and the movements' names were not "traditional" like the names he had called them during development.