The aesthetics of video game console design have come a long way since the first machines hit stores back in the 70's. Over time, they've evolved from clunky boxes that sat on your living room floor into elegant machines which sit gracefully next to your sleek flat screen TVs.

There have been some truly ugly consoles over the years. I present my personal list of the top 10 ugliest game consoles of all time. Note that I'm excluding pong systems and only counting consoles released in the United States.

10. Intellivision

I have a lot of fond memories of the Intellivision. We spent many hours huddled around this thing at sleepovers back in the mid 80's. But the console itself is an eyesore. Everything from the massive size of it, to the woodgrain, to the atrocious controllers, this system was a mess.

9. Sega Master System II

The original Master System was awkward too, but the revision is a step backward. It looks like an 80's sprinkler system control panel with a game system's guts shoved into it.

8. Atari Jaguar CD

Let's face it, the first thing you think when you see this combo is that it looks like a toilet. Which seems fitting considering the game library for this steaming pile of a console. Thankfully, most of them were so shoddily built that finding one that works is harder than pretending you're not playing games on a miniature toilet.

7. Magnavox Odyssey II

What happens when you cross a word processor with video games? You get this behemoth. Magnavox did not last very long in the game console industry, and this thing is exhibit B. Exhibit A is further down the list.

6. Fully-loaded Sega Genesis Model 2

OK, who at Sega looked at this monstrosity and said "OK, that looks good." Its the most awkward setup ever conceived by the video game industry. The model 2 itself is a nice design, but when you slap the model 2 CD on the side and extend the width of the thing, and then slam a giant mushroom into the cart slot in the top, you've got the Frankenstein's monster of video game consoles.

5. Apple Pippin

Before Apple was the trendsetter of slick aesthetics, they pooped this thing out. There's nothing blatantly offensive about it, but it just screams everything that's wrong and bland with mid-90's electronics. Its squatty and looks like the cross between an alarm clock and cheap VCR.

4. Bally Astrocade

I managed to come across one of these a few months ago, and I've chosen to keep it in its box rather than embarrass it by setting it next to much prettier consoles. It has some interesting features, like game storage built into the top and a cool cart loading mechanism, but its ruined by the executive answering machine look of the thing.

3. Fairchild Channel F

If the Bally Astrocade looks like an executive answering machine, the Fairchild Channel F looks like an answering machine owned by the type of guy who sits in a dingy basement surrounded by stacks of 20-year-old newspapers and boxes of canned cat food. The controllers are baffling and look less like controllers and more like the time machine Napoleon Dynamite bought off eBay.

2. Magnavox Odyssey

The Odyssey II is ugly, but this thing is a whole new level of ugly. It looks like a model of the Space Church of the Holy Cosmic Giraffe and I'd be afraid to touch that controller, which seems like a torture device rather than a game input device.

1. Telstar Arcade

What the hell is this thing? Its like one of the engineers designed a game console based off the scribblings of their 6-year-old kid because they forgot they had a deadline to meet. "Hey Dad, I wanna game machine that looks like a big triangle, and its got a racing wheel on one side so you can reeeeeeeeeee-reeeooooowww, and a gun on another side so you can pew-pew-prowsh, and some dials on the other side so you can blip-bloop, blip-bloop!"

This thing takes the cake in ugly game console design, and nothing this awkward will ever see the light of day ever again. Its like a perfect storm of awful manifested in a video game machine.