In this paper, the real-time simulation model of the modular multilevel matrix converter was split into three independent instances using the concept of virtual capacitance. In doing so, the number of state space matrices that define the system has been reduced significantly making it suitable for a small-scale real-time simulator, such as the RT Box. The verification of the proposed concept is done on a hardware-in-the-loop system compromising ten RT Boxes, where the physical model of the matrix modular multilevel converter is deployed, and control algorithms are implemented on the ABB PEC800 industrial controllers.