Cosmo Gang the Puzzle — stories left

For home use it was ported to the Super Famicom and to mobile phone games, and an arranged version with the characters replaced, described below, was also released.

The original was released in 1993-10 across the SNES and the SEGA Genesis. Because it is based on the system of the SFC version of this game, the puzzle mode that was an SFC-only original mode was made standard, and the password, which had been written with 3 hiragana characters, was changed to Latin letters in the Japanese version as well and is included without fail on every platform it was ported to.

As a result, while overseas versions of the original exist, the SFC version itself was released only in Japan, and on the wishes of an American executive at Namco Hometek, as Namco's North American arm was then called (now Bandai Namco Entertainment America), it was released as part of the Pac-Man series, a substitution made with an eye to sales and to the trust of game wholesalers.

In Japan, as far as standalone releases go, the Game Boy version was renamed Pac Panic and released on 1994-12-9, and an iPhone / iPod touch version was released in 2010-10.

A second retooling of The Puzzle that replaced the characters with those from Katamari Damacy, titled Korogashi Puzzle Katamari Damacy, was released in 2009 for DSiWare.

In the feature "The 7th Gamest Grand Prize" (1993) in the game magazine Gamest, it took 16th place among the year's hit games.

Game magazinesIn the "Cross Review" of Famitsu it received 7, 8, 6 and 8 for a total of 29 out of 40, and in the "Game Report Card" based on reader voting in Family Computer Magazine it was rated as follows, 21.63 out of 30.

This score placed it 92nd among all Super Famicom titles (323 titles in total, as of 1993).

Andy Lowe from GamesMaster stated that while he felt Cosmo Gang the Puzzle possessed more "involved" gameplay than Tetris, it lacked substance and didn't have as many features that other similar games had.

Lowe said that the game had a wider scope than other Tetris clone games did, and that it "features some devilishly strategic touches" that other titles lacked.

Biebly agreed and said that what little depth that Cosmo Gang had was very innovative, finding some of Namco's additions to be creative.

In EXPERT, clearing the whole field from LEVEL 111 onward gives, for the first 1 times only, a bonus of 1,000,000 points (and 100,000 points thereafter), and the credits, a list of the staff, are displayed for a while on the field background (arcade version only).

The Super Famicom version was re-released for the Wii U's Virtual Console in 2015 and outside Japan for the first time as part of the Nintendo Classics service in September 2024.

As a result, while overseas versions of the original exist, the SFC version itself was released only in Japan, and on the wishes of an American executive at Namco Hometek, as Namco's North American arm was then called (now Bandai Namco Entertainment America), it was released as part of the Pac-Man series, a substitution made with an eye to sales and to the trust of game wholesalers.

This version of the game was reworked and reskinned as Pac-Attack for North American and European markets, and was later ported to other consoles such as the Sega Genesis and Game Boy.

Cosmo Gang the Puzzle was met with a mixed reception from critics, being praised for its multiplayer aspect and gameplay but criticized for its graphics.

Though the team designed it to be easy for beginners, Namco executives made the team increase the difficulty to make it more appropriate for arcades.