SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter Galaxy Patrol is a 2D shoot'em up arcade ride viewed from a top-down perspective. The family-sized cabinet is designed like a spaceship with the feature of the cabinet shaking during the ride. The cabinet board has two buttons for weapons to fire projectiles or homing rockets and a lever labeled "SPEED UP", which tilts the entire ride. There is also a regular joystick on the left side of the board that maneuvers the ship which can also tilt the cabinet.

After inserting the coin, Sonic gives a speech to the player and hops into the red spaceship which gets launched from the earth's galaxy patrol station into space. Right after, Dr. Eggman appears in a small space pod to deploy bombs and obstacles at Sonic. Destroying bombs and obstacles rewards the player with stars. After arriving at the space station, Eggman will then attack with his space pod by firing projectiles or homing at the Sonic's spaceship after landing one of three hits. If the player defeats Eggman, doctor pulls back and returns with a large, green space armor on his pod. The player has to destroy the homing arms of the space armor before finishing him.

If the player manages to destroy Eggman's space armor, the player is rewarded with a ship upgrade and Sonic has saved the animal friends while Eggman flies away. Depending how well the ride has been completed, the arcade ride rewards the player with a certain amount of stars from one to five.