I've had great results using VirtualBox. That is a boot image? I think I could give it a try through VirtualBox.
I tried the emulated virtual machine and the video can skip ahead by a fraction of a second. I tried the SDL approach and I can't get it to load.
$ ./launch_sdl.sh luajit: error loading module 'lua-db.lua_db' from file '/home/dave/Downloads/lgj2019/lua-db/lua_db.so':
liblua5.1.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
stack traceback:
[C]: at 0x55768af820a0
[C]: in function 'require'
/home/dave/Downloads/lgj2019/lua-db/init.lua:8: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
/home/dave/Downloads/lgj2019/engine/engine.lua:1: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
./launch.lua:2: in main chunk
[C]: at 0x55768af2c1d0
Oh, it looks like my Libraries link against liblua5.1(Which is ABI-compatible with LuaJIT), which I guesss you don't have installed. Try installing liblua5.1-0 from your package manager. I'll try to release a fully portable version later today(One that ships Lua + Libraries as well).
Oh, and thanks for your testing!