The objective is for the player to place arrows on a board to lead mice into escape rockets while avoiding cats.

The knowledge gained from the network portion of the project helped Sonic Team in their development of Phantasy Star Online (2000).

[2]: 8–9  A brief premise is provided in the instruction manual, explaining that ChuChus are living on a space port that is invaded by KapuKapus one day.

In their frantic state, the ChuChus begin running around in chaos, and so the player must guide them to their rockets to save them.

A player can place up, down, left, and right arrows on the field of play, redirecting characters that step on them.

In the puzzle mode, the player is provided a limited set of arrows to place on the field to save all the ChuChus in play.

[3] During the time Sega was operating its servers, players were able to play the competitive modes online, while also being able to upload their custom puzzles and download those made by other users.

[5][6] Director and producer Yuji Naka conceived the game as a way to use the power of the Dreamcast to create 100 sprites moving at once.

He believed there are two trends to use evolving hardware: one is to make increasingly beautiful graphics, while the other is to squeeze as much processing power to use it to its fullest; he chose the latter in this case.

[7] Naka and his team found difficulty working on the networking component, but believed it was a good learning experience.

[12][13] That December, video game magazine Famitsu held a contest using a ChuChu-themed minigame for the Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit (VMU) that could be downloaded from the internet.

Various prizes were given out to winners of the contest, including Dreamcast controllers, VMU stickers, and pens.

to North America on March 2, 2000, three months earlier than the original anticipated release in June.

was mailed free to subscribers of Dreamarena, the European Dreamcast online gaming service.

Sonic Team also selected 2,500 of the 17,000 custom puzzles uploaded to the Dreamcast servers to include in the game.

[35][37][39][1] Stuart Taylor of Dreamcast Magazine (UK) called the multiplayer the "bread and butter" of ChuChu Rocket!, and praised it for being easy to pick up and put down.

"[37] Other critics also picked up on the game's Japanese and retro aesthetics, citing the simple, cute, and kawaii graphics.

[35][1][40] In addition critics also praised the game for its low retail price, giving a great fresh experience to gamers on a budget.

[39][40][1] Concluding their thoughts, IGN staff called it "quite simply the best multiplayer effort [they]'ve played in years, on any console.

However, praise was given for the ability to hook up four Game Boy Advances and play multiplayer using only one cartridge, and also for the inclusion of 2,500 user-created stages uploaded to the Dreamcast servers.

[47] In the original GameCube release of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (2003), a limited version of the Game Boy Advance port can be unlocked and played via the GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable.

Universe, developed by Hardlight, was released on September 19, 2019 for iOS, macOS and tvOS as a launch game for Apple Arcade.