Gamer proposes to girlfriend by hacking Chrono Trigger

Nerd love at its finest, with a maximum allowance of creativity and a minimum of french kiss retainer entanglement or dual use pocket protector prophylactics.

On October 17th, 2008, I proposed to my (now) Fiance. Originally I wanted to retun to the site of our first date, Mount Baker, near Bellingham Washington. Sadly, there was no discrete way to get her out there. So I turned to the next best thing, digitally recreating the mountain!

But why stop there? I figured I'd try and recreate many of our other favorite memories -- stargazing, dancing, even her favorite song lyrics (from the Princess Bride). I'm a college student who is studying Computer Science, and I wanted to do something unique that used my talents, so I did some research on Rom hacking, as she was playing through Chrono Trigger....

When her name appeared on screen (blurred in this video), she glanced over to me (on one knee, with the ring out), wondering, "How did they get my name in this game?" When she saw the ring, she reread the proposal, nodded yes, and said, "You are such a huge nerd! I love this!"

I proposed by hacking Chrono Trigger [YouTube via MAKE]

[#1 posted by mdh , October 27, 2008 5:58 AM]

Wow, she's right, you ARE a big nerd. A big awesome nerd. Rock on.

[#2 posted by Anonymous , October 27, 2008 6:13 AM]

Beautiful.

And to think that people complained about (weren't willing to 'get') Infomercia and Haven't had much to say about this!
J,J & R - sorry guys, sometimes you just can't win.

Very loverly - Nerd Love Rules - Live long and prosper!

[#3 posted by Anonymous , October 27, 2008 7:25 AM]

That's so 2.0mantic

[#4 posted by TheFirstMan , October 27, 2008 10:57 AM]

@3: Die.

And this video got me all teary-eyed.

[#5 posted by Garu , October 27, 2008 12:35 PM]

I was kind of disappointed he didn't end it with a yes/no prompt. Ideally, one of those ones where if you reply no then it says "please reconsider" or something then keeps prompting you again until you say yes.

[#6 posted by Brawndo , October 27, 2008 12:53 PM]

Her favorite song is the one from The Princess Bride, and *he's* a huge nerd?

[#7 posted by Anonymous , October 27, 2008 2:30 PM]

heh! you're like Francis from Super Paper Mario, in a good way!

hiiii-technicalllllll!

[#8 posted by nnguyen , October 27, 2008 4:20 PM]

Man... why does every proposal idea I've been coming up with for my girlfriend is taken?

[#9 posted by Anonymous , October 27, 2008 5:46 PM]

This is one of the best proposals I've ever seen. A college buddy of mine proposed to his girl by saving a series of saved games so the labels spelled out
"MICHELLE ANN"
"XXXXXXX WILL"
"YOU MARRY ME"
(Obviously omitting her last name) but this one trumps it by a factor of ten.

The only one more awesome is Ian McConville of MacHall and Three Panel Soul fame (posting: http://www.threepanelsoul.com/news.php?col=0&page=3 images:http://www.threepanelsoul.com/images/rants/20080620_screen1.png). He re-wrote Megaman Z, creating 8-bit avatars of he and his (now) wife (you played as her).

Still, Phil, my hat's off to you. You do nerds worldwide proud.

@Garu: That would have been pretty awesome.

[#10 posted by Anonymous , October 28, 2008 6:21 AM]

Awww...Phil, as the wife of an uber-romantic ubergeek myself, I was very impressed. May you two have many happy years together.

(However, consider fixing the spelling: she's your fiancee; you are HER fiance.)

[#11 posted by Anonymous , October 28, 2008 10:16 PM]

This is soooooooo much better than the twitter proposal.

[#12 posted by Aramax , November 6, 2008 3:38 AM]

If she would have said no... would it have led to some alternate ending?