Virtual Lab

“Make Sure You Control Me Well, Okay?”

“Just leave that to Lisa! After all, it’s about time for her lessons to get out.”
Creepy-crawly composition by @bemmpo.

It’s been a minute since we originally looked at the Virtual Boy here on this website! And when we first did, I came to something of an anti-climactic conclusion: I just couldn’t bring myself to hate the poor thing. Gimmicky though it may be, and in spite of a paltry library consisting of just 22 games; I hesitate to write it off entirely, though I know that I probably should. It helps that most of those 22 games are totally serviceable, all things considered — landing primarily between “inoffensive” and “genuinely neat.” But I suppose that makes the small handful of stinkers for it smell that much more foul, so to speak. And if you’re the sort looking to paint a particularly unflattering picture of the failed console (in shades of red and black, I imagine), today’s game represents what is likely the most hideous subject possible for your art study.

Enter Virtual Lab: Among the last titles on the Virtual Boy to be released in Japan, before Nintendo pulled their ill-fated device out of the market. Its very creation served as a last-minute effort by a small-time publisher — an appeal to owners of the dying console, in order to provide them with some dubious value proposition in expanding their small collections for the system. Ultimately, its true role to serve would be as the rarest cartridge for the doomed hardware, and as what is widely regarded to be the worst release for it. Funnily enough, the other game I’d rate as being its closest competitor is 3D Tetris; where Virtual Lab’s puzzle game design obviously owes a debt of gratitude to the original Alexey Pajitnov creation, and where 3D Tetris similarly demonstrates a lack of understanding for the most basic components of block-stacking games.

Most folk inclined to cover the Virtual Boy’s history are simply content to write off Virtual Lab as unfinished, borderline unplayable, and unworthy of any other further comment. But here on the Bad Game Hall of Fame, we take our studies very seriously. What this scientific paper sets out to demonstrate are the known circumstances of Virtual Lab’s development, to describe the depths of its gameplay, and to measure its ultimate impact on the planet (or at the very least, the games industry). I hypothesize that this experiment will result in some mild headaches for me, as well as time lost that I will not be able to reclaim. But those are just the sort of risks you have to be prepared to take in the name of science, I say! So, set your eyes roughly two inches away from your screen – adjusting your IPD dial and focus bar as necessary – and prepare yourself for this dissection of a failed Virtual Boy puzzler.

UPDATE (8/30/21): Since posting the original version of this article, we were privileged enough to conduct an interview with no less than Megu-tan herself — the developer of the game in question! As such, there are details and guesses made in this article that she was able to correct, and which the article has been partially rewritten in order to reflect. Still, it is very much worth reading the interview for additional context on Virtual Lab‘s development, as well as insights into the fascinating life of its developer.

“We Are Life Forms of Many Mysteries.”

Art by @bemmpo.

Without getting into too much detail with regards to the failure of the Virtual Boy (you can read our full history of the system for the full scoop): Nintendo saw fit to discontinue production of the platform in Japan toward the end of 1995, while still continuing North American support until August of ‘96. It was all they could do in the face of such embarrassingly low sales numbers — having only moved 140K units of hardware within their home territory come the end of its debut year.^[1] Of course, a reputable manufacturer such as Nintendo couldn’t just pull the plug without fair warning to their publishing partners: The word came down from high roughly two or three months in advance of the system’s public discontinuation, in order to give studios sufficient time to finish any games already in development, and get them licensed in time for Nintendo’s final production runs. In this way, companies which had already invested time and money into supporting the Virtual Boy could at least hope to make some sort of return on it, however negligible it may have been.

One such prospective publisher affected by the announcement was J-Wing: A still-fledgling Japanese company established in September 1994,^[2] with just a small handful of games to their name toward the end of ‘95 — three releases across the Game Boy and Super Famicom. These would consist of Shinzui Taikyoku Igo: Go Sennin and Super Zugan 2: Tsukanpo Fighter – home console takes on Go and Mahjong, respectively – as well as Chiki Chiki Tengoku on the Game Boy; serving as a drop tile-matching puzzle game in the tradition of… Well, I was going to say either Dr. Mario or Tetris, but Chiki Chiki Tengoku actually operates as a sort of novel hybrid of both titles. It’s also a game worth elaborating on further, as it’s the first credited industry contribution of developer ‘Nacoty,’ who will play a further role in this story.

Your goal in Chiki Chiki Tengoku is to match an assortment of falling two-part object pieces (with items including bells, keys, crowns, and harps) in vertical / horizontal stacks of three. On doing so – rather than immediately clearing them from the screen – they’ll transform every similar piece on the board into stars, which remain in place until you are further able to fill a horizontal row full of them. At this point, the stars transform into fairies, which will rise off-screen [so long as there are no unconverted pieces on top of them], and finally provide you with precious empty space to work within. Managing to clear the entire screen of objects gets you to the next level, where each subsequent stage is littered with more initial pieces to clear / expanded ranges of items to match. Repeat until you inevitably fill the screen to the top with uncleared items, and wind up with a Game Over.

Chiki Chiki Tengoku for Game Boy (J-Wing, 1995)

Chiki Chiki Tengoku is a no-frills affair; featuring a single gameplay mode, lack of multiplayer functionality, and a bare minimum of presentation. It’s not exactly what I’d call intuitive either, as far as puzzle games go: The extra step of having to match rows of stars in order to open space back up – combined with a relatively cramped 7×7 playfield – leaves you feeling a sense of constant, crippling constraint. I suppose there’s something to be said about how many moves you have to plan for in advance that might appeal to more advanced players, but that ain’t me. And when the time comes to finally watch those fairies fly off-screen, they do so in tediously slow one-by-one sequence, giving you time to idly twiddle your thumbs as you wait on the game. All said and done, I just can’t picture someone packing Chiki Chiki Tengoku for a long commute in place of Tetris. Hell, I’m not even sure it rates higher than the likes of a Hatris.

With J-Wing at this point producing games exclusively for Nintendo systems, and finding their titles lost in a sea of similar / superior releases; it’s likely that they had hoped that the Virtual Boy might’ve represented a potentially big break for them — an opportunity to stand out in a smaller software library, and perhaps even be recognized by “The Big N” for supporting their less popular hardware. In fact, they had no less than four games initially slated for the system, as indicated by their catalogue of scheduled releases advertised for September 1995’s ‘Consumer Soft Group Trade Show’;^[3] including the provisional titles ‘Out of the Deathmount (アウト・オブ・ザ・デスマウント)’, ‘Youju Gakuen’ (妖獣学園)’, and ‘Signal Rat (シグナル・ラット)’. While precious little is known about these other three games which were ostensibly in development (other than their intended genres — two “3D shooters” and a racing game), they were tentatively given early 1996 release dates, where the game which would become Virtual Lab (then billed as “Chiki Chiki Labo”) would precede them in December.

As such, the news of the console’s imminent demise at the end of 1995 must’ve made for a major disappointment for J-Wing. Not only that, but it appears that the company had already invested in their Virtual Boy development kit, and potentially begun work on all four of those originally planned games simultaneously; which very well may have eaten into a meager operating budget for the fledgling publisher. By any set of circumstances, this clearly made for a less than ideal situation — a potentially ruinous worst case scenario, even. It effectively left the company with two choices: Either take their lumps gracefully and re-focus on games for other hardware, or try and rush something out for the Virtual Boy while they still had the opportunity. Naturally, J-Wing would opt for the latter, and promptly contacted Nacoty with the directive to rush along their last-minute release for the Virtual Boy.

Now, when I say “Nacoty,” who I’m really referring to is a single person representing the developer’s sole staff member: The elusive ‘Ayase Megumi,’ who chooses to go by either of the aliases “Megu-Tan” or “Derek Megumi” online. All that being said, I wouldn’t put too much stock in Megumi being their actual given name; seeing as Ayase Megumi is a character name from the anime Creamy Mami, which Megu-Tan appears to be a fan of. Seeing as the alternate moniker “Derek” would certainly prove an uncommon given name in Japan, we can also assume it to be another invention of theirs to further obfuscate their real name, or otherwise serve as their preferred alias in recent years. At the end of the day, the only thing that’s clear here is that Megumi doesn’t want their real identity out there on the web, and that I don’t intend to be the one to invade their privacy. So, for the purposes of this article (and to account for any uncertainty with regards to their gender identity), we’re just going to refer to them as “Megumi” from here on out, with gender neutral pronouns where applicable.

Lady Sword: Ryakudatsusareta 10-nin no Otome for PC-Engine
(Games Express / GNN, 1992)

In any event: Megumi was something of a newcomer to the industry themselves come 1995, having first entered it in around 1992. As revealed in our interview with them, their entry point into the business came in the form of a cut-out company known as ‘Games News Network’ (GNN for short), where Megumi was made to learn the ropes as one of the studio’s two employed programmers. As a cut-out company (otherwise known as a “ghost developer,” à la Tose), they would go uncredited for their industry contributions, where their customers (often the game’s publishers) would be the sole company named within the final product. But thanks to Megumi, we can place a few of GNN’s credits, as well as Megumi’s own; such as the likes of Armored Metal Police Jack for the Game Boy, which they contributed to as a graphic artist and play tester. A big step forward for Megumi as a developer though came with the opportunity to write a full scenario for an original game: 1992’s Lady Sword for the PC Engine, as published by Games Express — a label for the notorious Hacker International, whose business model seemingly centered around incorporating topless nudity into otherwise standard [albeit unlicensed] genre games.

Lady Sword, for its part, serves as a take on the classic Wizardry style of first-person dungeon exploring RPG — with the added elements of gratuitous gore and nudity, of course. What makes it truly unique though is Megumi’s inspired premise for it: A world in which the whole human race verges on extinction, and a protagonist in search of a mythical weapon (the titular ‘Lady Sword’) with which they hope to turn the tables on the monsters who doomed their species. Along the way, you’ll also encounter the spirits of beautiful maidens who are either captured or slain by the monsters, who ostensibly exist to aid you on your quest — who more generally serve as excuses to meet the game’s nudity quota. Originally, Megumi themselves would’ve been intended to draw the game’s art (in addition to writing the scenario and programming duties); but due to time constraints, a part-time worker was brought in to handle those elements.

Another title GNN and Megumi were tasked with developing for Games Express would be 1994’s Quiz Toukou Shashin, again developed for the PC Engine. It represents a largely bog-standard “striptease quiz” game – the likes of which were inexplicably successful in arcades of the era – where answering trivia questions correctly is eventually rewarded with images of anime girls baring all. Keeping well in line with Games Express’ larger catalogue, the game proved to be something of a success within its niche — notable for its featuring a character bearing similarities to a popular character from SNK’s Samurai Shodown, and warranting the publication of a hint book for those looking to cheat the game’s quizzes. I’m not sure how well its numbers stacked up against Games Express’ most infamous / popular title – 1993 ero-fighter Strip Fighter II – but the ability for these titles to exist and thrive within the market spoke to they managed to a sizable niche audience. Games Express / Hacker International would operate between 1991 and 1995, before the market dried up and their operations ultimately proved unprofitable. This turn of events also meant that GNN were in need of a new regular customer.

Quiz Toukou Shashin for PC-Engine (Games Express, 1994)

It’s at this point that GNN would establish a working relationship with the publisher J-Wing, who saw fit to commission them to develop the aforementioned Chiki Chiki Tengoku. And when the time came for J-Wing to commission them again to create a game for the Virtual Boy, the terms were presented to them clearly: Megumi would have just one month in which to develop the game, in order to get it in before Nintendo’s deadline came due — as well as provide a bare minimum of time for debugging / quality assurance. In order to facilitate such a quick turnaround time, the game would originally be intended as a follow-up to Chiki Chiki Tengoku, and be permitted to recycle much in the way of the original game’s code. Oh, and one more thing: As per J-Wing’s specification, the game would be made to include prominent bouncing breasts; presumably as some means of appealing to the same sort of niche as Games Express before them, and presenting the closest thing to titillation possible [within Nintendo’s licensing constraints] on the Virtual Boy.

CORRECTION (8/30/21): As it turns out, the infamous “bouncing breasts” featured in Virtual Lab did not come as directive from J-Wing. Rather, they came as part of a policy enforced by no less than Megu-tan herself — who had clearly enjoyed incorporating this sort of element in their previous games, and sought to carry on tradition. As a matter of fact, the character whose breasts can be seen bouncing in the game is no less than a self-insert of Megumi — an idealized “self-portrait” of sorts, designed with the large breasts she wishes she had had at the time! Naturally, Megumi had no idea that the game’s manual would eventually assign this in-game character as being a thirteen year-old girl — a decision Megumi was shocked and mortified by, but which they didn’t have the ability to override or omit. For further details on how this whole mess came to be, please read our interview with Megu-tan.

As Megumi began development on the tentatively titled ‘Chiki Chiki Labo,’ J-Wing got to work putting together the game’s instruction manual and cover art. What this resulted in would be a disconnect between the plot and characters presented in said manual when compared to the game that was being working on — where Megumi was effectively left to wing it with the minimal guidelines that the company had provided to them. While Megumi would go on to create in-game art for a character named ‘Megu’ – described as being “17 years old with big breasts” – whoever had been commissioned to write the story and draw the art for the packaging / manual would settle on a 13 year old girl by the name of ‘Risa Katagiri,’ bearing little resemblance to the sprite work in the game. At the very least, a complete lack of any in-game plot or dialogue saves the game from more noticeably contradicting the reading material.

Evidently, there had been a want to include a two player head-to-head multiplayer mode, utilizing the Virtual Boy’s planned link cable peripheral. The Virtual Boy’s development kit had, in fact, come paired with a cable intended for just such purposes. Only two problems here: First, the system’s link cable peripheral never actually released to retail, which ensured that no game on the Virtual Boy would actually be capable of multiplayer play. Secondly, J-Wing only had the one Virtual Boy development kit at their disposal, and weren’t particularly eager or able to invest in a second so that such a game mode could even be tested. Funny as it may have been to have Virtual Lab as the sole entry in the Virtual Boy library to support multiplayer play – without the physical means to even functionally access it – it simply wasn’t meant to be.

At some point, Megumi was eventually told to drop the ‘Chiki Chiki Labo’ title in favor of the final ‘Virtual Lab’ branding, and hastily incorporate it as such on the game’s title screen. With the change made, the game and its packaging were sent to Nintendo for approval, and given the green light for a limited production run — in spite of the fact that Nintendo’s brand name is actually misspelled on both the game’s box and cartridge, as “Nintenndo” and “Ninntenndo” respectively. Wild and improbable as that slip-up may sound – given that Nintendo would’ve had final say on packaging approval – it points to a rather shocking realization: Nintendo had developed a rare laissez-faire attitude with regards to the Virtual Boy, and clearly weren’t bothering at all with matters of quality assurance at this point in the system’s soon-to-end lifespan. Whether Nintendo were too preoccupied to notice or simply too weary to care about giving the OK to an unfinished game, Virtual Lab had managed to luck its way to retail.

The most “notable” bit of the visuals amounts to a somewhat scantily-clad fairy gal on the title screen. Evidently, there are unused graphics on the cartridge which would’ve alternatively presented her with a more modest top on, which I suppose were pre-emptively drawn in the event that Nintendo deemed the original crop top too risqué?

Some online sources – including no less than Planet Virtual Boy themselves – translate 「シグナル・ラット」 as “Signal Tattoo,” rather than as “Signal Rat.” But judging from the fact that it is sounded out as “ratto,” and that one of the first replies to me announcing the article on Twitter was a correction by @TheRyusui, I’m going with the Rat here.

References to their gender identity which I have found all come from second-hand (or otherwise dubious) sources: Conjecture on the Virtual-Boy.com forums, participation in a FaceApp meme where they appeared to run their face through a gender-swapping filter, and other odd details I’ve gleaned from rough machine-translation of their Twitter history. Where their assigned gender is obviously none of my concern or business, my only interest in doing all this digging was the hope of referring to them with the pronouns they would prefer to be addressed by. Ultimately, my read on the situation is that they tend to keep their gender identity as ambiguous as their actual name, which I can totally respect. Keep folk guessing and more power to you, Megu-tan!

While Quiz Toukou Shashin itself lacks a staff roll, Megumi established their credit as the game’s programmer (and as one of its two artists) in a June 2020 Twitter post. Evidently, they were motivated to do so by a hashtag trending among Japanese game developers (#処女作ゲームスクショ晒そうぜ), wherein industry peers were posting screenshots of the first games they ever worked on. Curiously, two other games they list in their Twitter bio as having worked on (Metal Jack for the Game Boy and Lady Sword for the PC Engine) share 1992 release dates, which would obviously predate their quiz game by at least two years? My best guess is, Megumi’s contributions to these other two titles would have amounted to Quality Assurance, where Quiz Toukou Shashin represents the first commercial game they actually had a proper hand in programming.

“Professor, It’s Terrible! A State of Emergency Has Occurred!”

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am able to provide details and story synopsis from the game’s [Japanese] instruction booklet thanks to the efforts of @NARFNra, who I commissioned to provide me with a functional translation of its contents! While other sources exist with rougher translations of the manual into English, some of them are potentially dubious, as they’re derived from a source I’m not inclined to trust. In any case, Narf’s services here are greatly appreciated, and the wild story revealed was well worth the effort.

“The memo in my hand, I felt my body stiffen.” Japanese box art.

Welcome to the future year 2095, and to the Cosmo Station on the planet Marine Blue! It is here where one Professor Kitagari puts in his work as the head of the station’s Virtual Lab, and prepares to unveil his latest and greatest scientific finding: The so-called “ultimate lifeform,” given the identification ‘Myuu.’ This mysterious and miraculous creature has the ability to rapidly multiply, as well as merge with adjacent masses to produce increasingly long tracts of pulsating matter. To slow and control this process within a laboratory environment, the Myuu must be kept under cold temperature, lest the organism be left to multiply to an uncontrollable extent. And so it comes to pass that the Professor takes an ill-fated nap [after patting himself on the back for his own brilliance]; during which time the lab’s temperature control system breaks down, thereby allowing the Myuu to expand unattended.

After being woken by his trusty assistant Ken Kai and informed of the state of emergency, Kitagari springs into action as any good scientist would: By immediately deciding to flee the scene, and to go into hiding before his colleagues and peers in the field can find out and scorn him for it. Before he runs off though, he leaves a note for his teenage daughter Risa, who is due to return from school sooner or later. It’s written to simply read “Please don’t think ill of me!”, before Ken tacks on an addendum notifying Risa that he’ll be off giving chase to the irresponsible Professor. By the time Risa makes her way to the Virtual Lab, the Myuu have completely encompassed the laboratory floor, and are only continuing to pile up. After briefly contemplating running away herself, she discovers the note from her father, and realizes that she’s been left to clean up the mess.

Vowing to later make her dad pay for the trouble he’s caused, Risa quickly reads up on how to destroy the uncontrollable Myuu: Seeing as the creatures breathe through mouths that can appear on either end of their tube-like mass; the solution is to link them together and eventually close off all their openings, thereby leaving them to “suffocate and die.” At this point, the oxygen in the air appears to cause their bodies to “dissolve and disappear,” thus handily taking care of the clean-up in the process. With this decidedly cruel and unusual method in mind, Risa begins her mission to completely eradicate the hapless species, and protect her cowardly father’s reputation. All in a day’s work, I suppose?

Needless to say, but none of these elaborate narrative details actually manifest within the game itself; save for the general premise of destroying Myuu, and our imposter Risa on the right side of your viewport. I had to remember to write “viewport” instead of “screen,” because I nearly forgot myself: This is a Virtual Boy game we’re dealing with! So, between the two displays being beamed into your retinas, you may be wondering where the game sees fit to flaunt its 3D gimmickry? Well, for starters, there’s a shockingly sparse “scrolling starfield” effect that’s constantly passing by in the background, across the menu and in gameplay. Consisting of a very simple loop routine which seems to cycle between two sets of single-layer graphics (no parallax or anything to that effect), there’s actually a large gap between the alternating sets that makes it very easy to tell where the loop begins and ends, as well as resulting in a total lack of background elements for a noticeable span of several seconds.

Virtual Lab instruction manual. (Scan available)

The second 3D element you’ll immediately notice are Megu’s big ol’ breasts. And boy howdy, if those puppies ain’t just constantly jiggling, I tell you what! As you plod along the game, Megu will always be there in the corner of your eye; looking from left to right worriedly, dancing (?) her troubles away, and just generally bouncing up and down. Bear in mind that this is one of the game’s key features, if not the single-most important aspect to the game that Megumi paid the utmost care to. And so, I have no choice but to really hone in on this singular aspect, and treat it with some degree of serious analysis. Or to put it in other words: There’s so little else to talk about in terms of the game’s sparse presentation, that I’m going to use this tangent as an excuse to fill out that space.

To achieve the incredible effect of a tiny girl with comparatively large knockers in 3D, Megumi’s sprite consists of two slightly distinct per-display images. As you might surmise, the point of angle / emphasis for the 3D effect is drawn to the breasts themselves; giving additional emphasis to what is otherwise rendered as a large, undetailed lump of pixels — occupying a distinct color space from her skin tone and other features, in order for them to pop out that much more. To achieve the commissioned “bounce” effect, thent: Every time Megu’s sprite swaps to another image, her breast layer moves up by a measure of one pixel for a single frame of animation – rising above her neckline – before returning to their settled state. Truly a piece of carefully considered graphic design — a clear inspiration for the likes of the Dead or Alive franchise, and a technical feat for the humble Virtual Boy hardware.

Oh, and that’s almost entirely it for the 3D, by the way. Save for offsetting some other scattered elements of the UI in some impractical ways, the game makes no other significant efforts to utilize the Virtual Boy’s gimmick display. Actually, if I’m speaking frankly here: The game barely puts any effort into spicing up its bare-bones presentation at all. Much like Chiki Chiki Tengoku before it, Virtual Lab is a puzzler of the most no-frills nature, where your attention is clearly meant to focus squarely on the playfield and to be able to parse it as easily as is possible… which makes Megu’s cheering from stage right that much odder of a distraction, as your focus quickly adjusts to ignore her completely. Past a certain point, her presence only serves as a detriment to the game, as it monopolizes nearly half of the horizontal screen space — precious pixels which could’ve otherwise been used to display more practical gameplay elements.

I suppose it’s time we actually got to the gameplay itself, isn’t it? First things first: The game provides you with three settings for ‘Game Speed’ on its menu, comprising the singular available option for players within the game. With no settings for game variants, background music, or starting level; Virtual Lab is resolutely spartan in its simplicity, and absolutely transparent in what little expectation it has for players to want to dedicate the time to mastering it (which is to say, very little). Furthermore, this singular option couldn’t even be bothered to be labeled correctly; where the default ‘Mid’ setting actually begins the game at the fastest of the starting speeds, and where ‘Hi’ occupies that intended middle-ground between the quickest and ‘Low.’ That being said: Both Low and Hi present effectively zero challenge out the gate, as your dropping blocks practically stand and wait for you to send them down-screen. As such, I personally suggest selecting Mid for the highest speed, and leaving Hi for when you’re potentially too high to make snap decisions in a puzzle game.

Virtual Lab presents itself as a sequence of distinct levels, where your goal is to clear the screen completely of the Myuu representing the “blocks” of our block puzzle game. Stages begin with a randomized assortment of Myuu already littering the playfield, presented as a 7×7 grid just the same as Chiki Chiki Tengoku before it. Luckily this time around, the rules for clearing space are at least slightly more intuitive, and present a newly novel take on block puzzle-solving: Chaining together the Myuu in order to snuff them out requires connecting their openings from one to another (which can appear on any number of the four sides of a given Myuu-block), and closing off the circuits completely in order to effectively pop them. So, rather than simply filling out full horizontal rows or matching based on color; you’re made to carefully carve out sealable paths within the playfield, and to manage avoiding loose ends and unpluggable openings as best you can.

In other words: We’re working with something akin to Pipe Mania game logic here, as the comparison has been commonly made online. I guess that parses well enough — at least as far as the concept of sealed systems is concerned, I suppose? That said, you do lose the urgency / ticking clock of the flowing water being sent through the pipes; replaced by the piling up of falling intestine, I reckon. And unlike a typical Pipe-type game, you’re not really afforded the option to destroy / swap out your already laid-out Myuu, in the event of a mistake or sudden appearance of a more preferable piece. It’s hard to determine whether the world of Virtual Lab is more or less forgiving (seeing as I’m generally pretty terrible at pipe-puzzle games), but you have to admit that the block puzzle format does allow for a greater degree of flexibility. Of course, that flexibility has the same potential to suffocate, should you overextend yourself.

If your intestinal-looking tract of Myuu happens to have an opening that can’t be properly sealed [due to surrounding pieces], you won’t be able to trigger the chain until first clearing whatever obstructive Myuu might be in the way of it. In this way, your best-laid plans can be quickly derailed by unlucky moves, and begin to pile up irreversibly on you at a moment’s notice. As satisfying as it may be to burst a mound of 30+ writhing creatures with a final capper, you play a dangerous game in attempting to elongate the chain to that sort of length, where not noticing that you’ve accidentally left one route unsealed and buried beneath a pile of other unlinkable pieces will likely spell your inescapable doom. Unlike a Tetris or Puyo Puyo, you’re not given the means or the space to turn bad situations around, where the “point of no return” can occur as suddenly as it does silently.

The game only sees fit to throw a couple bones your way in terms of pile-up relief. For one, the edges of the playfield serve as seals to the Myuu’s openings, meaning you can count on them as a means of capping off your chains in a pinch. It also helps in allowing you to build sustainable chains entirely across the edges of the screen, where you can potentially leave the center of the screen free for your discard pieces — if that’s your strategy. The other bit of precious assistance you’ll get from the game is granted if you can score a chain of 10 or more Myuu, at which point an angel with a pickaxe will swoop in to excavate the bottom-most horizontal layer of the playfield. Why an angel with a pickaxe, exactly? Probably because Virtual Lab began life as a straightforward Chiki Chiki Tengoku sequel – if you’ll recall – and Megumi didn’t have sufficient time to think up some sort of replacement graphic by the time the game’s theming had transformed into something else entirely. Either that, or it’s there as a deliberate easter egg of sorts? My money’s still on the time-crunch theory.

Virtual Lab instruction manual. (Scan available)

Rest assured, folks: What the game may lack in helpful tools, it also lacks in the basic-most puzzle game amenities and features. Without the ability to hold blocks in reserve, to preview more than one piece ahead, adjust for lock delay, or to even so much as hard drop pieces down-screen; Virtual Lab feels more like a proof-of-concept than a fully-realized game. Not only that, but it’s clearly a concept that still has more than a few kinks to work out. In example: As Myuu appear at the top of the screen, they do so either as singular pieces or in horizontal stacks of two or three. Pressing the ‘A’ button on the controller will rotate each individual Myuu 90° clockwise, where the ‘B’ button will consequently ~~rotate them counter-clockwise~~ cycle through the order of the stack — swapping them in sequence from right-to-left [and back around]? Despite the bevy of available buttons on the Virtual Boy controller, there is no means of rotating Myuu counter-clockwise or cycling them in the reverse order.

This is not aided by the fact that the controls that are available to you are sometimes unresponsive, or prone to doubling your inputs — often at what feels like the worst possible moments in time. This makes even the basic-most aspect of positioning falling Myuu a challenge in and of itself, as you must work to correct for constantly over-shooting your mark when the game does deign to respond to you. Without the presence of ghost pieces to help you line up your drops or help gauge vertical distance, either, you might find yourself snapping Myuu into place far earlier than expected; at which point the lack of lock delay will commit you immediately to these potential unintentional placements. All you can do from there is curse aloud, and do your best to pick up from whatever inconvenient spot the game conspires to jam you into.

There’s also the matter of how truly randomly the game operates, in determining the quantity and opening orientations of your given Myuu. While most block puzzle games deal in seemingly random pieces, there’s at least some method to their madness; in terms of a limited selection of possible block configurations to pull from, or an underlying algorithm which can either work to prevent the same pieces repeating consecutively or otherwise work to make the game feel less or more “fair.” Virtual Lab, on the other hand, allows the possibility for any one of 8,000 variations of Myuu configuration to appear as your next piece, making for an entirely unpredictable and highly unwieldy lot. With it being practically impossible to set up your chains for a specific piece in mind – without also having to account for additionally uncooperative Myuu flanking either side of your ideal block – the game becomes less about “planning ahead” so much as mitigating a perpetual disaster.

For all the odds stacked against you and the lack of effective tools you’re given, there’s at least one upside to it all: Beating levels sure feels like a proper accomplishment, if and when you’re able to! I hate to mention Tetris for the hundredth time already in this article, but there’s something decidedly passive in the way you’re expected to engage with the standard [single-player] game — where you’re able to shut your brain off to a certain extent, and still perform at least competently. Virtual Lab, by comparison, demands every iota of your attention; in order to place your pieces effectively, to set up for multiple different chains across different quadrants of the playfield, and to test your ability to rapidly input the necessary swaps and rotations demanded on a second-to-second basis. By the point at which you’re able to deliberately split your stacks across the tops of vertical pillars, seal multiple chains with a single drop, and manage the feat of clearing the entire playfield past the third or fourth level; the Virtual Boy should honestly be printing out pre-approved application forms for Mensa, for all the four-dimensional thinking you must be capable of. Instead, you’ll have to settle for the game simply encouraging you to “Take a rest!” before transitioning you into the next stage.

All this puzzling action, I should mention, is accompanied by a single repetitive (if not competently composed) background tune. Said tune is complemented by far louder / shrill notes corresponding to every movement of the Myuu across the screen, resulting in a droning cacophony of indistinguishable beeps as the game picks up pace. And as the game gets progressively faster, the absence of hard drops and inability to skip screen-clearing animations becomes that much more noticeable; either serving as precious seconds of reprieve or as interminable pauses to your momentum, depending on your outlook. In either case, the sound effects certainly won’t help with your concentration, and a sane player will likely elect to mute the game past a certain point. At the same time, it’s not exactly an ideal game to listen to podcasts or watch YouTube while playing, given the amount of concentration demanded. Not to mention the intended isolating effect of the Virtual Boy’s interface, if you should even contemplate giving the game a go on real hardware (or some VR headset facsimile).

Unused alternate rendering of Megu / Risa.

For whatever it’s worth, my recommended way to play Virtual Lab – if you must, for whatever reason – is within the comfort of an emulator, with stereoscopic effects / second display turned off. Disabling the minimal 3D effects will spare you a few bits of distraction, the first and foremost of which being a completely unnecessary pulsing effect layered on top of Myuu on the playfield. Depending on your susceptibility to this kind of thing, the effect of the playfield popping out every few seconds can range from “unpleasant” to “wholly disorienting,” and mess with your ability to line up exactly where you’re dropping new blocks. Unfortunately, there’s no disabling the general throbbing animation that each Myuu is constantly undergoing — meant to illustrate their operating as living organisms, but serving more to mess with your ability to quickly parse the playfield.

The emulator option is also going to afford you the option to play with save states, and retain your progress through the game. While that might constitute “cheating” in some books, I’d argue it fits well enough within the spirit of the game, which does intend to provide passwords to players so that they can pick up from the latter levels even after powering down their systems. Only one slight problem with the way it’s intended to work: The game completely lacks an option to actually input given passwords. The part where the game gives you the seven-digit numerical codes on completing levels? That bit works like a charm! It’s just that there’s no possible way for you to type them in anywhere, given the complete lack of menu option for it. User ‘HorvatM’ of the Planet Virtual Boy forums managed to get as far as figuring out the convoluted way the passwords are generated, but couldn’t provide anything in the way of a means for entering them.

Other interesting insights provided by HorvatM’s post include the following: The game lacks any sort of ending, and seems to simply repeat itself past stage 99. In their creating a ROM map for the game, the only unused content they were able to identify on the cartridge came down to alternate copyright text and cleavage-exposing outfit option for Megu; meaning nothing in the way of an intended ending sequence, the remnants of a half-finished password entry screen, or anything else to indicate any sense of further ambition for a more polished final product. As far as the game’s code itself is concerned, it’s reportedly “full of redundant instructions, and everything seems to be as complicated as possible,” owing in part to the fact that it was ultimately “compiled without any optimizations.” That all sounds about right, doesn’t it?

Virtual Lab instruction manual. (Scan available)

All said and done, it’s probably pretty easy to see why Virtual Lab is considered the worst in show for the Virtual Boy. It’s a transparently incomplete product, as most visibly indicated by the presentation of its entirely unusable passwords, but also as reinforced by practically every other moment of duct-taped together gameplay. Even if you were to contend it passes the bare minimum bar for functionality, or find yourself able to look past the primitive presentation, there’s still one inescapable issue that you’d be forced to confront: The core puzzle gameplay driving Virtual Lab just isn’t particularly compelling or properly developed. Not only does it lack the immediate accessibility of more popular peers, but it also fails to hang with more deliberately complex competitors in the field, where its best attempts at “brain-teasing” are driven by luck rather than application of skill. The inability to properly plan ahead or successfully problem-solve its inadvertently inescapable traps just renders the whole experiment an exercise in frustration.

It’s at this point in an article where I attempt to pitch fixes for given games — to argue as to what could’ve been done better, and what decisions would’ve been best avoided. When it comes to Virtual Lab though, it’s easiest to just write the whole thing off: J-Wing and Nacoty shouldn’t have bothered in the first place, if they couldn’t dedicate the time or resources needed for developing a more fully-realized game. Past a certain point, they knew full well what they were slapping a price tag on, and seemed to do so with gusto. But where’s the fun in just writing a game off completely? Let’s imagine a scenario where Megumi had at least a couple extra weeks to git r’ dun, and perhaps a bit more passion for their work. I would certainly hope that the first thing they would think to do is get that password system properly up and running.

Barring whatever cosmetic / aesthetic changes we might deem fit to make, my primary recommendations would center around the gameplay itself. The biggest bugbear for me is the sheer unpredictability with regards to pieces that come through the pipeline. Being able to preview a couple Myuu-blocks in advance would be a good start, but certainly not the be-all end-all. I think what’s more important is narrowing down the range of possible blocks: Cutting out stacks of three entirely, and consolidating down to singles and pairs. It’d also be nice to have the additional option to rotate the stacks as a whole, rather than rotating the individual Myuu within them. There’s certainly not a lack of buttons on the Virtual Boy controller to prohibit this, and it’d allow for more in the way of vertical approaches for players so inclined. Hell, even if these changes had to be relegated to a ‘Game B’ alternate gameplay mode, that’d at least be serving up some variety in and of itself!

Underneath it all, you have to admit there’s something to the idea of crossing block and pipe puzzlers together. I do think that Virtual Lab represents potentially the worst possible take on that concept, though. Perhaps if more time had been spent fine-tuning the mechanics of it than was evidently devoted to modeling jiggle physics, we’d have come away with something that hit closer to the mark? But thanks to its gross-out aesthetic and prominently-featured cheerleader character, most critics seem unable to look past the presentation in order to more carefully consider the wasted potential for the gameplay. Granted, it’s hard to look past the visuals when the system at hand works as a literal pair of peripheral-cancelling lenses, forcing the graphics into the sole object of your focus. I really want to believe that poor Megumi did the best they could with such short notice and precious little time. But as a wise man once said: “If that’s your best, your best won’t do.”^[♫]

My math here is probably wildly off-mark, but here’s how I reached it: With five different possible blocks that the game can pull from (ranging between one and four openings on each of its four sides), four fixed angles at which a given piece can appear in, and the inability to rotate them independently from one another effectively locking them into a luck of the draw; I calculated something like 202020 for possible combinations of Myuu, stacked either individually or in sets or two or three. I reckon that doesn’t fully account for the ability to swap out the order of the Myuu across that horizontal stack, or the fact that unstacked / solitary Myuus probably shouldn’t need to account for which orientation they initially appear facing? But please bear in mind that I am an idiot when it comes to maths, and that I don’t actually care all that much about the correct answer to this question.

“Please Don’t Think Ill of Me!”

Art by @bemmpo.

Against all odds, J-Wing got their approval for Virtual Lab at seemingly the last possible minute, and had their production run of retail copies ordered. Unfortunately – at this point in time – there’s nothing available online to indicate or hint at how many copies of the game were ultimately printed. There weren’t any magazines bothering to track sales data on Virtual Boy releases either, which leaves us completely in the dark with regards to how many units Virtual Lab might have even managed to move. As a matter of fact, there were hardly any magazines still bothering to cover Virtual Boy games in any capacity, let alone releases as limited and low-key as a Virtual Lab. Luckily, I at least managed to track down two, providing at least a small point of reference for how critics would have perceived the game in its own time.

The first comes to us courtesy of Weekly Famicom Tsūshin, whose panel of four reviewers granted the game an aggregate score of 16/40.^[4] Reviewer ‘Ninja Masuda’ came equipped with the most pointed criticisms of the title: “It’s exciting to erase large chunks [of blocks], but it’s difficult to control. Almost no Virtual Boy-like production can be seen. In the case of Virtual Boy – which has weaknesses such as a single color and easy eye fatigue compared to other systems – it seems that it does not make much sense to develop software that can be done on other systems.” A fair assessment, given the lack of utilization of the Virtual Boy’s hardware gimmicks, and the fact that the game could have just as easily come out on any other given system. Another reviewer, Sawasdee Noda, had their own unique take: “It’s a slightly unique game in which things that look like internal organs fall down and are connected. I wonder if there are many people who will find it disturbing? I think they put a cute girl on the screen to try to reduce the grossness, but it just makes it more creepy.”

With those measured takes in mind; a review written for the Virtual Boy Memorial Commemorative Guidebook – intended to cover the entirety of the system library – minced far fewer words in scoring the game an astoundingly low 0.5 out of 100:^[5] “This is a very strange game that’s almost like some meth addict’s delusion, where you connect (what appears to be) intestines that are falling while pulsating and make them disappear. It’s a must-see for the unnatural, three-dimensional shaking boobs of a girl who meaninglessly stands to the side.” Most of the rest of the compendium is similarly written in a sort of sardonic, exaggerative tone; and will definitely pop up again on this site as we return to cover some of the remaining Virtual Boy games. But I couldn’t leave off this article without first sharing this awesome illustration from the book’s back cover. You’re welcome.

In any case, it can be assumed that Virtual Lab didn’t do particularly big business for J-Wing, who quickly returned to publishing across the Super Nintendo and Game Boy. Their next title to release after Virtual Lab would wind up being one of the most interesting in their whole catalogue, by my estimation: 1996’s Horai Gakuen no Bouken! on the SNES, serving as a high school comedy RPG. In terms of presentation and tone, I’ve seen it compared most frequently to Earthbound, which is probably a fair enough point. It is also, by some speculation, totally busted in how it calculates certain player stats, and generally presents itself as a pretty middling mechanical affair outside of that. But with all that being said: I wound up playing about 8 hours worth of it while writing this here article, and I honestly got a kick out of it! An excellent translation patch certainly helps matters, as it seems to retain much of the original script’s off-beat gags and eccentricities. Also, it’s one of those games that lets you pick from a whole bunch of characters to fill out your four-person party, which I happily took advantage of in order to assemble a squad of ass-kicking gals; so that will always get you an extra point in my evaluations.

Horai Gakuen no Bouken! for SNES (J-Wing / Dynamite, 1996)

For as much as I reckon there is to say about Horai Gakuen no Bouken! – to where I can barely even scratch the surface here – it didn’t seem to do much in the way of raising J-Wing’s profile back when it was first released. By 1997, they began to take advantage of the opportunity to publish for Sony’s PlayStation, debuting with Graphic Research’s Pururun! With Shape UP Girls: A fairly standard Arkanoid-type game, punctuated by full-motion video clips of the titular idol group / faux-fitness instructors the ‘Shape UP Girls’ bouncing about and cheering you on. Just when it seemed like J-Wing might have been poised to chase the doomed trend of softcore eroticism like Games Express before them, they lucked into a fluke franchise on the Game Boy: 1997’s Dino Breeder, which was quickly spun off into a further series of Animal Breeder games.

Hitting the market at just around the same time as Pokémon had revitalized Nintendo’s near decade-old handheld, the Animal Breeder series tasked players with raising pet animals of a variety of species. Not only that, but you eventually start to cross-breed these different species with one another — creating hybrid creatures along the lines of monkey-koalas and fox-lions and so on and so forth. The games were received well enough to justify four installments in both the ‘Animal’ and ‘Dino’ lines, eventually culminating with releases for the Game Boy Color as late as 2001. If you want a bit more context on these novel Japan-only releases, check out this page titled “Understanding the Game Boy’s Animal Breeder series.” At the same time as the Breeder franchise was beginning to do numbers for J-Wing, the company picked up the license to publish a couple PlayStation entries in the Princess Maker series; as well as developing a GBC conversion of Oh No! More Lemmings, which would become their first [and last] game to see a localization released in North America. For a couple years there, J-Wing were carving out a seemingly sustainable niche for themselves.

But as the company had to stall for time between their more ambitious and unique releases, they did so with the sorts of games that brought them to the ball in the first place: Interchangeable takes on Go and Mahjong, across a variety of different titles and attempts at establishing new IPs. In 2001, they released the first and second installments in a series to be known as Shiritsu Houou Gakuen, representing Mahjong gameplay paired with visual novel elements. Surely, the appeal of these sorts of games to J-Wing must’ve been how cheap they were to produce, and so they preemptively planned for at least four more titles in the franchise to release for the PS1. But alas, it was not to be: J-Wing would publish their last games in 2003, ending with their first and only finished title for the Game Boy Advance (Matantei Loki Ragnarok: Gensou no Labyrinth). By time of curtain close, they had plans to publish a title for the PlayStation 2 (another installment in the Matantei Loki Ragnarok series), which would go unceremoniously unreleased.

Between 2004 and 2007, the company website would seem to go unmaintained — directing to a placeholder homepage, and providing nothing in the way of updates on their company’s status. At some point prior to or during 2006, however, the company had secretly undergone a massive pivot: Trading in industrial food machinery, medical equipment, and a small assortment of kitchen stock items — including ‘low-alcohol wine’ and pickled fish. With their website only updating to reflect this drastic change in business model by April 2007, their new ‘Company Profile’ page would make no mention of any previous or planned video game ventures. Now, while I want to believe that this truly was the result of a failed games publisher going boldly into a new business venture, there is perhaps a less exciting possibility here: The “J-Wing” responsible for video games likely folded in or around 2004, allowed their domain to lapse, and eventually saw it taken over by a pre-existing “J-Wing Co., Ltd.,” who had already been operating since July 1991. As proof for this theory, you can check out the current J-Wing website; where their company profile indicates their date of establishment as such, and provides information consistent with what was displayed on their previous domain.

Pururun! With Shape UP Girls for PS1 (J-Wing / Graphic Research, 1997)

In either event, one thing is certain: J-Wing as a game publisher had failed to keep up with contemporary game design trends, ran their small handful of successful properties to the point of exhaustion, and banked far too much in middling table-top game translations. Not only that, but as was the case with their four planned games for the Virtual Boy, they seemed to have an unlucky habit of planning too many games in advance for consoles already on their way out — as demonstrated by their plans to seemingly continue development on PS1 games past 2001. This is to say that Virtual Lab – while certainly representing a low point in the company history – doesn’t necessarily reflect the level of quality of their broader catalogue. At the very least, Virtual Lab tried at something relatively novel (short of the goal as it may have fallen), where their endless barrage of Go and Mahjong variants seemed content to play as safe as possible. They probably make for decent enough digitizations of those traditional games, for whatever that’s worth? But at the end of the day, they certainly didn’t seem to move the dial any for J-Wing, and ultimately seemed to bury them in the end.

With J-Wing’s decidedly unspectacular legacy covered at this stage, the question still remains: Did Nacoty / Megu-tan go on to do anything else of note in the video game business? Well, as it turns out, there really isn’t any further industry history to cover on their part. By testimony of Megumi themselves, they pretty promptly “left the game industry at the end [of the Virtual Boy’s lifespan]” — seemingly disillusioned, burnt out, or otherwise dissatisfied with how their brief career in the trade had gone. Seeing as Megumi doesn’t like to disclose too much in the way of personal information, it’s unknown what greener pastures they moved on to in the wake of games development, but I certainly hope it brought them some amount of happiness. These days, you can still keep up with them on Twitter, where they seem to spend a lot of time in VRChat taking cute photos of themselves and their friends’ avatars. Again, all I can say is more power to you, Megumi. 仮想世界での生活をお楽しみください！

The enduring legacy of Virtual Lab itself is a two-fold bit of public curio: Its reputation as the worst game the Virtual Boy had to offer, and as one of the rarest cartridges for the system to boot. Evidently, whatever limited production run it received has resulted in exorbitant asking prices for the small handful of copies still surviving out there — sums to the tune of $2,000 for loose cartridges, and as high as $6,750 for sealed boxes. Its scarcity compounded by its negative reputation thus results in this degree of unattainability, and serves to stop many a Virtual Boy “complete collector” dead in their tracks. As fitting an end as any, for a game which just barely managed to make it into the system library by the skin of its teeth. At the very least, it ensures that Virtual Lab will always hold a place in discussions of the Virtual Boy, and continue to fascinate curious spectators for the decades to come.

It’s difficult for me to come up with any poignant closing thoughts on Virtual Lab. Much like the Virtual Boy itself, I can’t bring myself to despise it, as busted and lacking as both may well be. I’ve certainly played and written more about the game than most folk compelled to complain about it online ever have, and yet I don’t feel like any of my time was really wasted by it? I don’t know, man: I’m just a gal perpetually fascinated by these so-called “bad games,” and it’s always my tendency to try and find some good in all of them. Maybe there’s someone out there who has their own idea in mind for a combination Tetris / Pipe Dreams type game, who might stumble on Virtual Lab (or even this article) and learn some valuable design lessons from it. Or maybe Nacoty’s industry contribution is already good enough as is, and may hold some lasting appeal to some puzzle game aficionados. All I can say for sure is: I’m finished with it now, and I’m prescribing myself some much needed shut-eye time.