Back to Home11/13/2025, 3:33:51 PM

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

bbayles

338 points

85 comments

Mood

excited

Sentiment

positive

Discussion Activity

Very active discussion

First comment

11m

Peak period

Day 5

Avg / period

20.5

Comment distribution82 data points

Based on 82 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
11/13/2025, 3:33:51 PM
6d ago
Step 01
02First comment
11/13/2025, 3:44:41 PM
11m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
66 comments in Day 5
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
11/19/2025, 4:11:48 PM
3h ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (85 comments)

Showing 82 comments of 85

pmarreck

1d ago

3 replies

Looks like they got married in 1997

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

If indeed it's "Scott Elson Corley".

skrrtww

1d ago

1 reply

The latter link is referring to different people.

pmarreck

1d ago

1 reply

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

Deleted the false divorce link ;)

netsharc

1d ago

1 reply

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.

pmarreck

22h ago

Maybe DBAD?

koakuma-chan

1d ago

3 replies

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

1d ago

2 replies

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

aidenn0

1d ago

1 reply

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"

1d ago

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.

yed

1d ago

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.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

1d ago

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

missingdays

1d ago

"This content is not available in your region"

Medieval indeed

mproud

1d ago

The article says High Voltage Software, which is correct.

I hope someone passes this post to him.

mtillman

1d ago

2 replies

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

xp84

1d ago

1 reply

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!”

mtillman

1d ago

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

samplatt

1d ago

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

astrocat

1d ago

6 replies

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

1d ago

3 replies

The old trope of forgetting your wedding anniversary cheat code.

jdeibele

1d ago

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.

giancarlostoro

1d ago

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.

QuantumNomad_

1d ago

At least we know he’s not cheating

ralferoo

1d ago

1 reply

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

Thorrez

13h ago

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

MarkusWandel

1d ago

1 reply

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

alchemist1e9

1d ago

1 reply

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

johnisgood

1d ago

3 replies

[delayed]

UniverseHacker

1d ago

1 reply

“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.

doubled112

20h ago

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

alchemist1e9

1d ago

sorry I changed to “have”.

inanutshellus

1d ago

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

elzbardico

1d ago

This made my day

robotnikman

1d ago

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

eleveriven

1d ago

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

proofofconcept

1d ago

2 replies

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

1d ago

4 replies

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.

westmeal

1d ago

Props man, wish you guys a happy life :)

Herodotus38

1d ago

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

brian-armstrong

1d ago

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

proofofconcept

1d ago

Good for you both! That is so awesome :D

jihadjihad

22h 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.

Lownin

1d ago

1 reply

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

MayeulC

1d ago

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-...

archargelod

1d ago

1 reply

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

rideontime

3h ago

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

zkmon

1d ago

1 reply

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

1d ago

1 reply

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

mbg721

22h ago

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

asimovDev

1d ago

1 reply

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

8f2ab37a-ed6c

1d ago

That's incredible, great find.

muragekibicho

1d ago

2 replies

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?

philipwhiuk

1d ago

It's the hard suffering mods.

dang

21h 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...

mos87

1d ago

2 replies

ehr.. dozens?

This brings the Fallout 2 memories anyway...

travisjungroth

1d ago

This one was real.

puzzlingcaptcha

1d ago

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

flobosg

1d ago

1 reply

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...

collinmcnulty

1d ago

For others clicking through, check the acknowledgements

harel

1d ago

1 reply

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

eleveriven

1d ago

A story with emotional weight makes the technical bits stick better

pgporada

1d ago

1 reply

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

alexpotato

1d 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.

mosburger

1d ago

1 reply

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

21h ago

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

zillazills

18h 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.

ProfessorZoom

1d ago

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

skavi

1d 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?

wigster

1d ago

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

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

BoorishBears

1d 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

eleveriven

1d ago

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

lovegrenoble

1d ago

Nice, thanks for sharing.

miklosz

1d ago

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

potato3732842

1d 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.

ranbato

1d 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...

montag

1d ago

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)

Archit3ch

18h ago

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

NebulaStorm456

1d 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.

demiters

1d ago

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

throw7

1d ago

Does Bill Gates count?

cowLamp

1d ago

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

cameron_b

6d ago

This is beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

AIorNot

1d 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

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