WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 45916094

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

342 points| bbayles | 3 months ago |32bits.substack.com

86 comments

order

astrocat|3 months ago

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.

theginger|3 months ago

The old trope of forgetting your wedding anniversary cheat code.

ralferoo|3 months ago

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

eleveriven|3 months ago

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

MarkusWandel|3 months ago

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

robotnikman|3 months ago

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

proofofconcept|3 months ago

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!).

powerclue|3 months ago

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.

jihadjihad|3 months ago

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.

AIorNot|3 months ago

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

zkmon|3 months ago

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.

bcraven|3 months ago

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

asimovDev|3 months ago

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

BoorishBears|3 months ago

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

mosburger|3 months ago

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

byearthithatius|3 months ago

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

mtillman|3 months ago

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

samplatt|3 months ago

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

xp84|3 months ago

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!”

ranbato|3 months ago

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...

cameron_b|3 months ago

This is beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

potato3732842|3 months ago

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.

pgporada|3 months ago

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

alexpotato|3 months ago

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.

NebulaStorm456|3 months ago

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.

zillazills|3 months ago

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.

skavi|3 months ago

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?

muragekibicho|3 months ago

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?

dang|3 months ago

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...

philipwhiuk|3 months ago

It's the hard suffering mods.

harel|3 months ago

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

eleveriven|3 months ago

A story with emotional weight makes the technical bits stick better

eleveriven|3 months ago

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

ProfessorZoom|3 months ago

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

mos87|3 months ago

ehr.. dozens?

This brings the Fallout 2 memories anyway...

puzzlingcaptcha|3 months ago

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

throw7|3 months ago

Does Bill Gates count?

cowLamp|3 months ago

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

chasil|3 months ago

[deleted]

ardi11|3 months ago

what does "better" mean for you?

umanwizard|3 months ago

That’s an incredibly pessimistic thing to post on such a cute story!

miklosz|3 months ago

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