The player controls the titular character, a mouse who was imprisoned in a castle by a mad scientist until aliens appear and try to attack him, with the main objective of the game being to escape from the castle, while battling against aliens that come in his way.

Cheesy originally started as a project intended for the Atari Jaguar, which was first announced in May 1994 as one of the upcoming titles for the Jaguar by Ocean Software and was originally scheduled to be released around the fourth quarter of 1995,[2][3] but the game was moved to the PlayStation after the system was a commercial and critical failure.

[4] The music was done by Zero-5 composers Dave Newman and James Veal.

[5] Cheesy was first showcased to the public at various trade shows such as E3 1996,[6] before being released in Europe by Ocean in November 1996, and was later published in Japan by Jaleco on 24 July 1997.

[1] Cheesy received mixed to negative reviews from critics since its release.