A mentally challenged man by the name of Jobe was a gardener. Neighbors and friends called him The Lawnmower Man. One day Dr. Lawrence Angelo, a man who worked for a government agency called The Shop, took Jobe under his wing and began increasing his intelligence using virtual reality games. Unbeknownst to Dr. Angelo, The Shop also began running experiments on Jobe, turning him into a military machine. After undergoing extensive tests and spending inordinate amounts of time in the VR labs, Jobe, who had become a super powerful and super intelligent master of the world of virtual reality, swore that he would take over every computer terminal in the world.

As Dr. Angelo, it is your job to break into Virtual Space Industries and contain Jobe before he escapes his virtual reality domain and reaches the networks. If you want, you can play the game as Carla, a close friend and confidante of Dr. Angelo.

Much of the eight levels in this game play like a side-scrolling platformer/shooter. You run and jump on buildings and such and shoot guards, cars and other enemies while avoiding gunfire and obstacles, such as psychic furniture and cans fired from a soda machine. You can gather power-ups along the way, such as homing bullets, smart bombs, score multipliers and extra lives. You'll also have the opportunity to hijack a helicopter and drive a missile-firing car (or motorcycle) along a busy street.

The rest of the game is composed of virtual reality worlds. Here you will fly forward and pass through portals while avoiding obstacles such as walls and meteors. Certain virtual worlds are Cyber War sections. In these portions of the game, you will shoot your way through enemies and obstacles (such as hexagons) in addition to avoiding obstacles. In the final virtual world, you must battle it out with the Doomplayer, the being responsible for imprisoning Jobe in virtual reality.

Based on the 1992 sci-fi film of the same name, The Lawnmower Man is for one or two players. The two-player mode is simultaneous.