The heart-warming gem:

> I sent a note about these Easter eggs to Scott Corley [the game's developer]. He said that he had recently pulled out the game to show the marriage proposal to his son. But he’d forgotten the code and couldn’t make it work! He and Melissa did indeed live happily ever after.

Reminds me of this vid by a guy who did a romhack of Chrono Trigger to propose to his then-gf who was playing through it for the first time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_HMLvLB7b0 "I proposed by hacking Chrono Trigger (Oct 24, 2008, 6m 57s)"

He writes in the description about what he was going for as far as making it seem like part of the actual game while still referencing their romantic history, and how well it worked (good for them!).

Not video games, but the article reminded me of marriage proposals in scientific articles:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%281...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037843711...

Mine did

-back in 2013 I made a short iphone game in unity for my wife and installed it on her phone - when she got past the first level it played a photo montage and marriage proposal, I was also there with a ring btw

Interesting read! Video games like Final Fantasy XIV and The Sims feature unique marriage proposals, blending romance with interactive storytelling — a growing trend where players can experience real-life moments within virtual worlds.

I didn't do this, but I did use a spare unsigned short (used for memory alignment) in the Quantum Atlas 10K II disk drive's servo firmware to store my wife and I's anniversary date just for yucks. :P

That reminds me about an easter egg[1] in arcade racing game Horizon Chase. If you trace a heart shape (on mobile device/nintendo switch screen) at the start of the race, it plays a short video with a proposal at the end. Game is very fun too.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoeKgQifaO4

Software teams back then enjoyed much more freedom and natural wild context. IT departments, security, audit etc weren't as pervasive as today. Yahoo chat, movie downloading, online games were all part of work life.

https://scorley.com

really love Scott's website. what a time capsule. Wish the visitor counter still worked. I hope he's doing alright nowadays

i remember richard garfield (game designer/MTG) created a proposal card...

https://magicuntapped.com/index.php/articles/proposal-the-ma...

The Klax port for Game Boy Color (1999) contains a hidden wedding proposal. It took Mike Mika's girlfriend 3 years to find it

https://tcrf.net/Klax_(Game_Boy_Color)

A guy I know proposed to his wife in the end credits of summoner. They’re still happily married afaik.

Don't see it mentioned yet - the guy behind the fantastic YouTube channel CodeParade created a beautiful little game, custom engine and everything, all just to propose to his girlfriend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EF91O2wMX0

I haven't read the article yet but I assume he's talking about the credits of Star Wars Battlefront 2 from 2005. We'll see if I'm right.

Edit: I was wrong, the author doesn't even list it.

Grim Dawn by Crate Entertainment has a secret area with a chest containing a wedding ring. Easter Egg for one of their backers to propose.

I'd add a link, but Cloudflare...

This is beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

I'm reminded of this proposal project done with Portal 2 that Valve actually assisted with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8SdYz7cq04

This trope has been used in "Free Guy" movie (not a marriage proposal but as a love letter)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Guy

Guy reveals to Millie that his code is actually a love letter to her from Keys: during the development of Life Itself, Keys had encoded what he knew about her tastes into an AI routine in the game, which was eventually incorporated into Free City, explaining why Guy felt drawn to MolotovGirl.

Looks like they got married in 1997

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/07/10/melissa-duffy-scot...

If indeed it's "Scott Elson Corley".

The one I wrote in Perl did. It also worked. https://github.com/pgporada/ourperlgame

I went to U of I and I’m super curious about that “ I-L-L / I-N-I” option. Any chance someone’s found out what it does?

there was one in spider-man, and the girl left him for his brother

This little heart warmer taught more more about game/binary hacking than more specific articles on the subject.

It's like watching someone do digital archaeology, brushing off memory addresses instead of fossils

Is Magic The Gathering close enough? https://draftsim.com/mtg-proposal-art/

Apparently it took Richard Garfield (creator of both the game and the card) 3 games before finally drawing the card on a 4th game, and casting it to propose

Does Bill Gates count?

What's the criteria for changing HN post titles?

The earlier posting was 'A marriage proposal hidden across two playstation games' or something like that.

Is there a HN bot doing this or is it the mods?

ehr.. dozens?

This brings the Fallout 2 memories anyway...

if you're asking about real-life marriage proposals that were hidden inside video games as Easter eggs or custom levels

star wars battlefront 2 (the good one) also has one

Nice, thanks for sharing.

Wait till you marry. She will make you play infinite number of games!