Virtual Lab on the Mega Drive

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Virtual Lab's launch on the Virtual Boy! I've been working on a Mega Drive remake of it, and I've decided to put it up for download now:

Virtual Lab for Mega Drive (2025-nov-03)

If it looks familiar, it's because Megumi herself has played it before.

• Controls are more tight, so now you shouldn't struggle with placing the myuu (the pieces you drop).
• Graphics are now in proper colors so they won't hurt your eyes.
• The fairy effect is different (not a flashing background anymore) so it should be less prone to causing seizures.
• Lisa's animations have been expanded and improved. There's also a "Lisa Test" where you can check out all of them!
• There's a short tutorial to teach you how to play!

The game isn't finished though, largely due to one game breaking bug that I haven't been able to fix yet despite spending months on it:

• The code to detect the loops is buggy. It mostly works, but there's clearly a memory leak somewhere because it sometimes fails to detect a loop or detects one where there isn't.
• Difficulty adjustment isn't implemented. The grid isn't even filled in, so in many cases you can clear a level by dropping a single myuu.
• There's a versus mode but it's incomplete, in part due to the above (the bug causes more severe memory corruption than in single player and can render it unplayable). The idea was to let you attack the other player by clearing your own myuu, but so far none of the versus mechanics were implemented.

If I ever figure out how to fix the bug, I may actually bother to finish the missing stuff.

Tutorial

What is implemented is a short tutorial telling you how to play. It only goes over the bare minimum you need to know, but it should clear up the most important things to actually get anywhere (they apply to the original game too!).

The game becomes a lot easier when you realize that you can use the walls as part of the loops. It actually kind of becomes required to actually survive.