The Summer Athletics: The Ultimate Challenge is a series of competitions in various sports modeled after the Summer Olympic Games. It includes swimming, jumping, throwing, cycling, jogging, platform diving, archery, and the new skeet shooting (two varieties), along with a total of 28 sports that are organized into eight different disciplines. The control scheme is the same for all of them; it consists of rhythmic motions to keep the athlete moving and rapid time events (hitting a button when it gets displayed on the screen) for carrying out specific activities. The player must make different rhythmic motions depending on the input device that they are using. For example, in the swimming event, the player must alternately push two buttons using a keyboard while they must rotate the analog sticks using a gamepad. During the skeet shooting, the player character will automatically aim at the target; the only thing the player needs to do is fire at the appropriate time.
The game has a straightforward career mode in which players accumulate a predetermined number of experience points following each competition. These points can then be invested into one of five metrics, such as their running speed or leaping skill. The new character editor allows users to change virtually every aspect of their facial appearance. Boosts are available to players in the arcade mode that can be selected as an additional gameplay option. These boosts temporarily improve the player’s athlete’s performance.
A new cooperative mode is also available for relay races (sprint and swimming), which works as follows: in parallel to every handover shown on the screen, the player passes his input device onto the following player.
