Simon Says! has four colored portions of a large tile, each producing a particular tone when activated by the device. A round in the game consists of lighting up one or more portions of the time in a random order, after which the player must reproduce that order by pressing the correct color. As the game progresses, the number of color presses increases.

Simon is named after the simple children's game of Simon Says, but the gameplay is based on Atari's unpopular Touch Me arcade game from 1974. Simon Says! differs from Touch Me in that the Touch Me buttons were all the same color (black) and the sounds it produced were harsh and grating.