Yu Suzuki announced a Sega Saturn port at a late 1996 press conference (the same conference at which "Fighters Megamix" was unveiled), elaborating that AM2 research had been studying "Virtua Fighter 3" for the past few months and had at last determined that it was possible to create a Saturn port comparable to the arcade version. To facilitate the conversion, AM2's Research and Development labs spent some months working on a 3D accelerator cartridge for the Saturn, but the cartridge was canceled for undisclosed reasons. Sega officials nonetheless stated that "Virtua Fighter 3" would be ported to the Saturn with or without the upgrade cartridge. According to insiders, this cartridge was being designed by Lockheed Martin Corporation and based on the same Real3D chipset used in their upcoming 3D accelerator card for PCs that was being done in collaboration with Silicon Graphics and Intel (and based on years of experience on the docking simulations of the Apollo CSM with NASA). Staff from Core Design claimed to have seen the completed 3D accelerator cartridge in action during an early 1997 visit to Sega of Japan, running a demo of the Saturn version of "Virtua Fighter 3" with two playable characters.