Back in 1988, a little-known ski-jumper by the name of Eddie Edwards set the sporting community on fire. I'm sure you'll appreciate just how difficult that is at the Winter Olympics.

Working part time as a plasterer and having the dubious distinction of being Britain's best ski-jumper (the competition at that point consisting of imaginative bank robbers who couldn't afford a getaway van) Eddie "The Eagle" managed to become one of the most famous and endearing sporting personalities ever, despite coming dead last in every event.

Eddie was out of his league. He knew it, and the fans knew it. The Olympic Village Laundrette certainly knew it. But the more poorly he performed, the more popular he became; so much so that after 100,000 people chanted his name at the closing ceremony the only recourse afforded to the Olympic Committee was to tighten the rules and ban all but the very best athletes from ever qualifying again. Eddie was out on his ass; the only compensatory factor that he was well attuned to being in this position.

Sports Champions mirrors the kind of collective red-tape approach that so cruelly snuffed out poor Eddie's Olympic dreams. It's an example of how a corporate expects people to have fun, rather than embracing fun when it spontaneously occurs.

Consisting of six mini-games, Sports Champions is one of the first generation of Move-enabled titles designed to thin your wallet in the never-ending search for the perfect motion control. To assist you, you're invited to select from a number of avatars that will perfectly embody the type of fun you'll be expected to have shortly. They also happen to be the most stereotypical collection of characters ever seen outside of a Guy Ritchie movie.

There's Tatupu, the Samoan-born leviathan who is in touch with the spirits of his ancestors and considers himself a role-model for the younger generation. Kat is a sassy, street-wise boxer from London. Jackson, the 193cm African-American "Blacktop Phenom" enjoys crochet and home-made lemonade. No wait, he's a basketballer.

Wishing to keep this review as scientifically accurate as possible, I settled on the character most aligned with my personal attributes; Giselle is the sexy face of young Brazil, one of the best female soccer stars on the planet, and is currently in possession of a butt you could grate cheese on. It's scary how prescient modern game designers are.

The mini-games are divided between bronze, silver and gold championship levels, as well as a free-play mode where you can challenge other human competitors. To start with, it's best to follow the tutorial and calibrate your movements; the last thing you want to do when holding a small remote device with a glowing pink ball attached is to look stupid in front of other people. Fortunately, Giselle suffers no lack of self-confidence, and together we make a formidable team in Disc Golf - ably crushing the cast from Dangerous Minds one after the other, whilst unlocking bonus items and trophies with reckless abandon.

Disc Golf, far from being an entirely made-up sport, is precisely the type of mini-game that lends itself well to motion control. A subtle flick of the wrist in either direction can adversely affect the trajectory of the disc, and it's clear to see that given enough practise there will be some phenomenally talented players emerge. It's by no means the best game included in Sports Champions however, and therefore isn't the best example of what the Move can really achieve when given enough attention by suitably skilled developers.

Neither, sadly, is Beach Volleyball. Despite being both Brazilian and female, even Giselle couldn't make it entertaining. It's a forced menagerie of spikes and.. whatever they call the other moves. The game plots your movements for you, which really just leaves you to swing your arm around in the hope that fun will somehow occur in spite of you.

Where Sports Champions starts to get interesting is about the time you spot Bocce in the menu. Bocce was invented when someone finally cracked at an outdoor bowls session, picked up the ball, and lobbed it through the air; proving at a stroke that throwing is preferable to rolling, and concussion makes for interesting table banter. Here the Move finally shines - allowing accurate pitch, force and lateral control over the final destination - it might be a simple concept to get your projectile as close to the mark as possible, but in reality it's fraught with complexity thanks to the number of different input variables the Move can offer.

Likewise, Table Tennis is a clever inclusion. As the bat used in Table Tennis is a lot closer in weight to the Move controller than the Bocce projectiles, it feels much more accurate and responsive. Table Tennis again follows the same generic objective - beat your competition, move forward, unlock items. Although the technology used is clever, the concepts on offer are far from groundbreaking.

The Gladiator Duel is possibly the most ambitious inclusion. Wielding the Move as a sword, you challenge other players in an attempt to knock the stuffing out of them using timely attacks and considered defensive moves. It's a sign that there are indeed some developers out there willing to try something new; unfortunately it's also quickly apparent that the controller struggles to accurately map the difference between some attacks. I'm not sure if the latency is being introduced at some point by the complexity of the mapping, or if the unit simply doesn't recognise some moves - either way, attempting to get clever with the device ultimately results in frustration.

Archery, on the other hand, seems to be the reason Sports Champions exists at all. First shown at the 2009 E3 convention (when Sony was forced to cobble together a media session after Microsoft had finished with their smoke-and-mirror Kinect show) the object is to notch an arrow, draw the bow and fire at a range of targets. Using either one controller or two, and available in split-screen mode as well as a basic AI face off, you'll be compelled to sacrifice accuracy for urgency as you attempt to stave off your competition.

With the Archery game, the Move controller finally feels accurate and well balanced - the movement of the arrow and the process behind it is clever, no doubt, but coupled with the variety of targets and competitive drive on offer, it's clearly the best of the bunch.

Over the past week we've checked out a few different Move-enabled titles, and haven't found any real redeeming factors in any of them. Sports Champions has shifted the goalposts in that respect, but only marginally.

Much like the predicament Eddie found himself dealing with, Sports Champions insists that fun can only be procured in a structured way. That it must confirm to all known stereotypes, that these rules are in some way carved in stone and passed down following a sermon on Mount Wii.

Yes, there are moments of brilliance here - Archery, Bocce and Gladator Duel do absolutely demonstrate that the technology is sound - it's just presented in such a bland manner that you could be forgiven for thinking Move was only ever designed to be a curious peripheral targeted at the EyeToy market, and it wasn't until Microsoft's arm-flapping last year that they decided to take it mainstream.