Once you have inserted a coin into the cabinet of and pressed either start button of Namco's 1992puzzle arcade game, Cosmo Gang: The Puzzle, you will proceed to the mode selection screen shown above; you will then have ten seconds to select either "1 Player Mode" or "Interactive 2 Player Mode", by pushing the joystick left and right and pressing the Rotating Button to confirm your choice. If you chose the former, you will then have ten seconds to choose between four difficulty levels - "Easy" (Level 0), "Normal" (Level 10, starts with 50000 points), "Hard" (Level 40, starts with 1000000 points), and "Expert" (Level 100, starts out with 2000000 points) by moving the joystick up and down, and again pressing the Rotating Button to confirm your choice.
1 Player Mode
Once you have pressed the Rotating Button for a second time to confirm your chosen difficulty level, a Bakuto (from Cosmo Gang: The Video) will fly off the top of the screen in his ship as the first game background appears behind the 78-square grid and he starts dropping game pieces (which could be comprised of up to three Containers, up to three Jammers, and one Ball) out of it; use the joystick to move the pieces left, right, and down (for up to 24 extra points in the case of that last one), and your Rotating Button to rotate them (in an anticlockwise direction). When you fill a line of Containers they will disappear - and when a Ball appears, note which direction that arrow is facing, for it will move in that direction when it drops (and eliminate any Jammers it hits on the way down to the bottom of the screen). If you have chosen to start the game on "Normal", "Hard" or "Expert" level, the "Star Meter" will fill up every time a Ball eliminates a Jammer; once it is completely filled, a Star will fall down out of the Bakuto's ship up at the top of the screen and eliminate seven rows of Jammers when it lands.
Levels 0-3
Levels 4-7
Levels 8-11
Levels 12-15
Levels 16-19
Levels 20-23
Levels 24-27
Levels 28-31
Levels 32-35
Levels 36-39
Levels 40-43
Levels 44-47
Levels 48-51
Levels 52-55
Levels 56-59
This was also the first game from Namco since Dig Dug II to not have an ending; the four closest ways you can get to winning is if you reach 10000000 points, eliminate 10000 Jammers, fill 1000 lines or reach speed level 1000. Once your pieces reach the top of the screen, the Bakuto will fly back down into view, as all the Jammers on the screen start laughing and the text "GAME OVER" appears - and if your score was high enough, you will have thirty seconds to enter your name (up to eight characters) upon the high-score table. However, one thing that many people do not know about this game is it forbids the name "AAAAAAAA" on its high-score table; if you try to enter it, it will be changed to one of the following references to older Namco games: