How many video games include a marriage proposal? At least one | Hacker News Reader

How many video games include a marriage proposal? At least one

32bits.substack.com

342 pointsbbayles86 comments

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.

The old trope of forgetting your wedding anniversary cheat code.

I proposed on 01/01 and got married on 07/07. Both 2001 so 01/01/01 for the proposal but I didn't want to wait until 07/07/07.

I originally wanted to do 01:01 on the 1st but we both were asleep by then. We dated for almost a year before the proposal.

We got around this by keeping the same number but swapping the months out. Started dating in August, actually got legally married same month, but the ceremony was in October all of the same day. I used the cheat code of familiarity to never forget.

At least we know he’s not cheating

Or he could have just googled "scott corley melissa".

Using archive.is just because the article is region locked to US-only: https://archive.is/SeCmf

Good thing he didn't just do that, because we got a some good information from Scott's reply.

Not that it matters, but we would get the same information if he was able to show it to his son that time.

The fact that they did live happily ever after just makes it even sweeter

This made my day

"Ever after" with a time limit. If you actually google as someone suggested, the third hit is for the divorce proceedings.

Wrong marriage. They are still married today and had four children.

"had" or "has"? Huge difference! I will assume "has".

Edit: oops, yeah, "have", not "has". My bad. :P

Arguably Melissa had four and thus they have four, eh?

“Have” is the word you are looking for, “has” isn’t grammatically correct. However, “had” in past tense is also correct, as it refers to the fact that they were born in the past, it does not imply (as you seem to be saying) that the children aren’t alive anymore.

I used to have kids. I still do, but I used to too!

You continue to have kids! :D

sorry I changed to “have”.

Aw, that's sweet! Glad it worked out well for him, always nice to see some good news.

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!).

That's me! I made that 17 years ago, still happily married. Took me like two weeks of full time tinkering. It involved a lot of trial and error messing with a hex editor.

I remember that video! 14 years ago it inspired me, to program a text adventure game proposal for my wife (still happily married). Thanks!

Good for you both! That is so awesome :D

Thank you for sharing the video way back when. I remember thinking it was very touching.

Props man, wish you guys a happy life :)

The way "romhack" was spelled made me think it meant "romance hack" for a second, which based on the video you linked seems appropriate, too.

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...

For others clicking through, check the acknowledgements

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

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.

I think Sam Andreas' Hot Coffee reveal made a lot of studios very wary of including (on purpose, or accidentally) extra content.

Even before that, SimCopter had a bit of a blow-up.

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

Fun fact: The song is a music-box version of a song he'd written decades previously: https://youtu.be/LhZHntVt6cI

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

That's incredible, great find.

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

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

So incredibly niche and specific but also theoretically viewable/verifiable. This is incredible.

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.

Summoner aka the game the "Attacking The Darkness!" video came from! :D

Imagine if you did that - in the end credits - and she couldn’t make it all the way to the end of the game. “Wasn’t meant to be!”

Not just that, I think it was summoner 2 which means she’d have to be real committed!

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

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

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.

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

It did make me think of a Borderlands one I heard about. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good writeup, and the video listed here is unavailable: https://gamesbeat.com/7-awesomely-geeky-video-game-marriage-...

Looks like they got married in 1997

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

If indeed it's "Scott Elson Corley".

This feels so medieval, the way the announcement is written.

Indeed. It felt like an obituary but to announce a wedding. Looking up the town Wikipedia states a population of just under 20k as of 2020 so back in 1991 when that article was written most likely less. So a very small community and I imagine that back then it was just common for people to make announcements like that.

But I also think the city did hold some old fashioned beliefs and views. 1. "In 1992, Lake Forest gained national attention when it attempted to ban the sale of offensive music to anyone under the age of 18.[15] City council members used existing ordinances against obscenity—defined in the codes as "morbid interest in nudity, sex or excretion"—to buttress their campaign.[15] Mayor Charles Clarke stated, "If they sell an obscene tape to somebody underage, we will prosecute."[15] The person who came up most frequently in discussions of obscene content was Ice-T, a rapper who has since also performed as an actor."

Interesting to think back to those days and remember how censored thing were. I was born in the 80s so nude scenes or swearing was just not a thing on standard broadcasting here in Canada. I remember hearing shit on a show at some point and it really stood out. Then channels like Showcase came along and it seemed like it was wild as a teen. Now anything ever aired back then feels tame to today. I am surprised what defines PG13 hasn't been changed because I am certain there is nothing happening in a PG13 movie up to a R rated movie that my teens don't know about. Anyways I am going on here if I continue I am going to start talking about how I am against ID to use the internet. Just found the article like you say strangely written. Cheers

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Forest,_Illinois

As someone who grew up in this area at this time period, I can tell you that Lake Forest doesn't have much of a sense of community of it's own separate from the Chicago metropolitan area. North Chicago suburbs tend to sound like small communities on paper, but it's impossible to tell when one ends and another begins, so they all sort of bleed together into a single mega-suburb.

I think it was just normal to put such announcements in the newspaper at this time and this is the format of how it was done.

While Ice-T was a rapper, I suspect that it was his work with Body Count (a metal group) that was the problem in 1992, as Cop Killer was the poster-child that year for "we need to ban some music"

Yes I remember those days. I was pretty young but it definitely made news and was definitely a hot topic. People adamantly argued that music like that was a huge factor influencing defiant, disobedient anti police youth at the time. No mention of the influence of societal and economical disparities many minorities and some communities faced. But the truth is there are many factors that influence all our beliefs and feelings and music is absolutely something that has effect on how we feel.

"This content is not available in your region"

Medieval indeed

Pretty standard, actually. Maybe not today, I dunno. I wouldn't say medieval, though.

The latter link is referring to different people.

Ah, thanks for pointing that out, you're right.

Deleted the false divorce link ;)

It even says Corley, [Actual first name] Scott (Scott as middle name).

Ah, 2025, where people can't even pay attention to the order of words any more.

Maybe DBAD?

The article says High Voltage Software, which is correct.

I hope someone passes this post to him.

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.

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

I always find stories like this fascinating and heartwarming.

Why?

B/c:

- My wife is not nerdy or technical at all

- In fact, I'm the only one in my entire extended family (cousins etc) that is technical

So anytime I hear a story about married couples where both are SWEs (or equivalent) it's wild to me.

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.

https://www.wowhead.com/npc=121086/shawn#comments

One of the kinder humans I've had the pleasure of knowing and one of the best people I've worked for. He and his wife met playing World of Warcraft. Also, the IRL engagement ring has a UV reactive stone and the same inscription.

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?

Reminds me of the player who modded FTL to add an event to propose: https://www.killscreen.com/ftl-proposal/

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?

Yes, we changed it in keeping with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

In this case, though, "Under the microscope: NCAA Basketball Final Four 97 (PlayStation)" didn't seem right, so I used language from the opening paragraph instead. That's one valid place to look, when scouring a page for representative language suitable as a title.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It's the hard suffering mods.

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

A story with emotional weight makes the technical bits stick better

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

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

ehr.. dozens?

This brings the Fallout 2 memories anyway...

For those who missed out: you could end up in a shotgun wedding then get a divorce in New Reno, Las Vegas-style.

This one was real.

Nice, thanks for sharing.

Does Bill Gates count?

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

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

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