I never had a video game console when I was a kid; my parents said something about books or actual sunlight or homework or whatever whatnot they were spewing at the time. So, of course, I’ve gone overboard since living on my own, and now have a Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Wii, and Sega Genesis. All of those are ready to go at any time except for the Sega, cause, you know…it’s a Sega.

I feel slightly guilty every time I play video games - which ironically is sadly not as often as I ought to given all the systems I own - because of all the other stuff I could be doing. But then I get over it pretty quickly. And now, I’ll have even less a reason to feel guilty about video gaming, because Energy Star, the agency that tells you how efficient all your gadgets are, will start monitoring video game consoles.

Treehugger reports that the new standards required to meet Energy Star’s seal of approval are stated thusly:

The new requirements include using less than one watt during off mode, and less than 5 watts during sleep or auto-off mode. The consoles will have to power down to sleep mode after an hour of inactivity. Also, Set Top Box and DVD/Blu Ray/Movie playback functions have to come within 10% of the Energy Star set top box requirements set out in April of this year.

So, like I said, this will let us all feel a little better about wasting half an hour (or four hours) playing our games of choice. As for me, even with the newer systems, I have to stick with MarioKart for Super Nintendo. I’m going to embarrass one of my best friends for a second here (he doesn’t read this, thankfully), and tell you that senior year of college he actually had to wear a wrist brace for a while since he damaged it playing MarioKart so much. And then kept playing. What a hero. Yes, we were that cool. Always invited to parties.

UPDATE: I forwarded this along to my friend so he could see what I wrote about him (like I said, he doesn’t read this because he’s a big important banker guy), and he replied, “Well I think it would’ve been justice to at least mention how darn good I was.” Which is a good point. It is only fair to mention that Matthew Lawton is literally the best MarioKart player I have ever known. Even better than Pete Rooney, who talked a big game, but could never come through when it counted.

Better, Matt?

Anyhow, you can takepart here to learn how to save energy at home, which will also lower your energy bill. Win/win.