Summer Athletics: The Ultimate Challenge is a collection of sports events based on the Olympic Summer Games. It features 26 sports divided into seven disciplines: Swimming, jumping, throwing, cycling, running, platform diving and archery. The handling is similar for all of them: rhythmic motions to keep the athlete moving and quick time events (pressing a button when it gets displayed on the screen) for performing certain actions. The mentioned rhythmic motions depend on the input device the player uses, e.g. at the swimming event the player needs to press two buttons alternately when using a keyboard and rotate the analog sticks when using a gamepad.

The game features a basic career mode where the player gains a fixed amount of experience points after every event which an be reinvested into improved stats. There is also a optional arcade mode where the players have so-called boosts to their disposal to improve their athlete's performance for a short time.