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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.
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

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.
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.
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.
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

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

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
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.
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
Looks like they got married in 1997

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

If indeed it's "Scott Elson Corley".

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
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?

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

This brings the Fallout 2 memories anyway...

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!