> 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 days ago [-]
The old trope of forgetting your wedding anniversary cheat code.
jdeibele 2 days 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 2 days 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_ 2 days ago [-]
At least we know he’s not cheating
ralferoo 3 days ago [-]
Or he could have just googled "scott corley melissa".
Good thing he didn't just do that, because we got a some good information from Scott's reply.
yreg 8 hours ago [-]
Not that it matters, but we would get the same information if he was able to show it to his son that time.
eleveriven 3 days ago [-]
The fact that they did live happily ever after just makes it even sweeter
elzbardico 3 days ago [-]
This made my day
3 days ago [-]
MarkusWandel 3 days ago [-]
"Ever after" with a time limit. If you actually google as someone suggested, the third hit is for the divorce proceedings.
alchemist1e9 3 days ago [-]
Wrong marriage. They are still married today and had four children.
johnisgood 2 days ago [-]
"had" or "has"? Huge difference! I will assume "has".
Edit: oops, yeah, "have", not "has". My bad. :P
inanutshellus 2 days ago [-]
Arguably Melissa had four and thus they have four, eh?
UniverseHacker 2 days ago [-]
“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 2 days ago [-]
I used to have kids. I still do, but I used to too!
johnisgood 2 days ago [-]
You continue to have kids! :D
alchemist1e9 2 days ago [-]
sorry I changed to “have”.
robotnikman 2 days ago [-]
Aw, that's sweet! Glad it worked out well for him, always nice to see some good news.
proofofconcept 3 days 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:
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 days 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.
Herodotus38 2 days 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!
proofofconcept 3 days ago [-]
Good for you both! That is so awesome :D
brian-armstrong 3 days ago [-]
Thank you for sharing the video way back when. I remember thinking it was very touching.
westmeal 3 days ago [-]
Props man, wish you guys a happy life :)
jihadjihad 2 days 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.
flobosg 3 days ago [-]
Not video games, but the article reminded me of marriage proposals in scientific articles:
For others clicking through, check the acknowledgements
AIorNot 3 days 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 days 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 days ago [-]
I think Sam Andreas' Hot Coffee reveal made a lot of studios very wary of including (on purpose, or accidentally) extra content.
mbg721 2 days ago [-]
Even before that, SimCopter had a bit of a blow-up.
archargelod 3 days ago [-]
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.
really love Scott's website. what a time capsule. Wish the visitor counter still worked. I hope he's doing alright nowadays
8f2ab37a-ed6c 3 days ago [-]
That's incredible, great find.
mosburger 2 days 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 2 days ago [-]
So incredibly niche and specific but also theoretically viewable/verifiable. This is incredible.
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
montag 3 days 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
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...
demiters 3 days 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
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.
This feels so medieval, the way the announcement is written.
14 3 days ago [-]
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
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.
aidenn0 3 days ago [-]
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"
14 3 days 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.
missingdays 3 days ago [-]
"This content is not available in your region"
Medieval indeed
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3 days ago [-]
Pretty standard, actually. Maybe not today, I dunno. I wouldn't say medieval, though.
skrrtww 3 days ago [-]
The latter link is referring to different people.
pmarreck 3 days ago [-]
Ah, thanks for pointing that out, you're right.
Deleted the false divorce link ;)
netsharc 2 days ago [-]
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 2 days ago [-]
Maybe DBAD?
3 days ago [-]
mproud 3 days ago [-]
The article says High Voltage Software, which is correct.
I hope someone passes this post to him.
NebulaStorm456 3 days ago [-]
This trope has been used in "Free Guy" movie (not a marriage proposal but as a love letter)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Using archive.is just because the article is region locked to US-only: https://archive.is/SeCmf
Edit: oops, yeah, "have", not "has". My bad. :P
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!).
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822%281...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037843711...
-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
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoeKgQifaO4
really love Scott's website. what a time capsule. Wish the visitor counter still worked. I hope he's doing alright nowadays
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
https://tcrf.net/Klax_(Game_Boy_Color)
https://magicuntapped.com/index.php/articles/proposal-the-ma...
I'd add a link, but Cloudflare...
Edit: I was wrong, the author doesn't even list it.
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.
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.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/1997/07/10/melissa-duffy-scot...
If indeed it's "Scott Elson Corley".
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
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.
Medieval indeed
Deleted the false divorce link ;)
Ah, 2025, where people can't even pay attention to the order of words any more.
I hope someone passes this post to him.
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.
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?
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...
This brings the Fallout 2 memories anyway...