When Virtual Bart is strapped into Martin Prince's Virtual Reality experiment at the elementary school science fair, his reality goes virtual. Each virtual reality program represents a stage in the game that he must play through to escape the machine before it crashes.
The game consists of three side-scrolling platform stages and three stages that take place from a rear view. Virtual Bart assumes the roles of a pig, dinosaur, and baby for the platform stages. He then experiences other challenges such as tossing tomatoes and eggs, sliding down a water slide, and driving a motorcycle in a post-apocalyptic Springfield, all accessed by chance via a wheel-of-misfortune.