Virtua Fighter 3

Virtua Fighter 3 (Japanese: バーチャファイター3, Hepburn: Bācha Faitā Surī?) is the third fighting game in the Virtua Fighter series. Two new Japanese characters were added to the roster of fighters: Aoi Umenokoji, a beautiful Japanese woman and a childhood friend of Akira Yuki who used a nimble form of Aiki-jujutsu as her fighting style of choice, and Taka-Arashi, a Sumo wrestler from Japan. Taka Arashi would not make another appearance in the Virtua Fighter series until Virtua Fighter 5 R; the series' current producer, Hiroshi Kataoka explained that the removal of Taka in subsequent installments was due to the technical implications of having a substantially larger character.

It was the first arcade game to run on the Sega Model 3 system board. Computer and Video Games described the game's demo, unveiled in early March 1996, as "the most astounding display of video game graphic muscle ever in the history of this industry." Sega had made several announcements that a port of the title would appear on the Sega Saturn. However, lagging sales and the coming launch of the more powerful Dreamcast effectively halted such a plan. It can be assumed that had the game been released, it would have had significantly reduced graphics to accommodate the Saturn's weaker hardware. Other rumors suggest that the Saturn version might have had to accommodate a 3DFX-powered, Videologic PowerVR-powered, 3DO M2-powered or Lockheed Martin Real3D-powered upgrade card, in order to enable an 'enhanced' port of the game to run that would not have been possible on stock Saturn hardware.