For every Ryan Giggs there's a Robbie Savage, every Lamborghini a Skoda, and for every Nintendo Game Boy there's a Barcode Battler.
These are the video game consoles that may have sounded like a good idea after a few beers down the pub - and you'd have to be pretty smashed to think the Barcode Battler would catch on - but were anything but when they hit the shelves.
Back to the drawing board for you lot, and better luck next time...
1. PHILIPS CDi
Where do you begin with the Philips CD-i? On paper it wasn't a bad idea. You could be playing The Legend of Zelda one minute, before swapping out the CD-ROM for an interactive version of Encarta the next - this was particularly handy in the days before Wikipedia.
Shame you were dealing with some of the worst games ever made, including Zelda's Adventure, which was practically unplayable - although it does fetch a few quid now.
And how about that controller? Resembling a TV remote, it was ugly to look at, not to mention incredibly laggy and unresponsive. Perfect for the twitchy, high-speed medium that is gaming.
2. NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY
The fact that virtual reality is only just making a comeback now is testament to how bad Nintendo's Virtual Boy really was - although you could make the case that it wasn't a proper VR device to begin with.
There was absolutely no head tracking, everything was controlled with a traditional game pad and the games featured awful monochrome visuals. If the aim of VR is to immerse gamers in a whole new world, then the Virtual Boy failed miserably.
The only thing it was good at was making people throw up. There was even talk that it could cause brain damage. Definitely not one of Nintendo's finest moments.
3. NOKIA N-GAGE
As far as ideas go, a mobile phone that could run something a bit more advanced than Snake wasn't half bad. Unfortunately for Nokia, the N-Gage resembled something that you order at a Mexican restaurant, and that wasn't even half of the problem.
The device that was famously compared to a taco was also a pain in the arse to use, both as a phone and a gaming handheld. The button layout was crap, the screen was taller than it was wide, the speaker and microphone were badly positioned and, worst of all, you had to remove the back and take out the battery every time you wanted to play a game.
The iPhone this most certainly wasn't.
4. SEGA MEGA-CD
Believe it or not, there was a time when Sega could do no wrong. Sonic was king of the mascots, the Mega Drive was kicking ass and arcades were packed with killer Sega games like Space Harrier, Outrun and Golden Axe. Then the Mega CD came along...
The Mega CD was ludicrously expensive - don't forget, you couldn't use it without owning a Mega Drive first - there weren't enough games on it, and the games that did make the cut were mostly rubbish. The only people who benefitted from the machine were the jobbing actors who showed up in all those awful full motion video cutscenes.
Mind you, it was home to Sonic CD and Snatcher, so it wasn't all bad.
5. BARCODE BATTLER
The Barcode Battler wasn't great, was it? Released at a time when the Game Boy was top dog, the Battler was a handheld that transformed everyday barcodes into great warriors that would do battle. That was the idea, at least, but the reality was much different.
These great warriors were represented by a few digits on screen, which made the whole thing about as thrilling as, well, scanning barcodes. Seriously, if you want to scan barcodes, you might as well just get a job at Tesco - at least they'll pay you for it.
Then again, maybe if they jazzed it up a bit and released it as a phone app, it could make the weekly shop a bit more interesting... Is it due a comeback?
6. GIZMONDO
Bluetooth support, text messaging, GPS, a built-in camera and gaming capabilities - in many respects, the Gizmondo was ahead of its time. It might have been too far ahead, in fact, because this was a classic case of Jack of all trades, master of none.
Text messaging was tricky, the GPS was wildly inconsistent, video playback was choppy and the battery was rubbish. But most importantly of all, the games weren't that great.
And the amount of cash they wasted on it. It was launched at a star-studded bash that featured Busta Rhymes, Pharrell and Sting, then came the TV ads, and they even opened a dedicated Gizmondo store in London.
7. APPLE PIPPIN
Even if you're the most ardent Android supporter and wouldn't dream of buying anything other than a Windows PC, you've got to admit, Apple knows how to design a product. That wasn't the case back in the '90s, however, when the company produced this mess.
You can pretty much tell if a console is going to be crap by the state of its controller, and the Apple Pippin's boomerang shaped effort looked like it had been designed by Crocodile Dundee. It was badly marketed, overshadowed by the likes of the PlayStation and Saturn, and in typical Apple fashion, was also ridiculously over-priced.
Even with Halo and Destiny developer Bungie on board, the Apple Pippin was a massive flop.
8. ATARI JAGUAR
Back in the days before flat-screen TVs and high speed internet connections, gamers cared not for frame-rates and resolution, but went absolutely bat-shit crazy about bits. You had your 8-bits, 16-bits, 32-bits and then Atari came along with the world's first 64-bit console. Surely it couldn't fail... right? Wrong.
Because it was such a pain in the backside to develop for, only 67 games were ever released on the platform, and out of that lot, only a handful were any good. It also didn't help that half the games didn't look as flashy as the stuff coming out on the technically inferior Mega Drive and SNES.
And then, of course, there was the controller, which looked like something E.T. would use to phone home with.
