PHILL Spiess loves his girlfriend Annie Flansburg so much he spent weeks rewriting the game she was playing to include a surprise marriage proposal.
"I wanted to propose in a unique way and had bounced several ideas off our friends," Mr Spiess told Greenpixels.com.
"I really wanted to do something more memorable than just dropping to one knee in a restaurant.
Mr Spiess, a computer science student and software engineering intern, decided to rewrite one of the games she was playing so that it would include a story of some of their special memories and end with a proposal.
He spent about three weeks "hacking", or modifying, a custom level in the Nintendo DS game Chrono Trigger.
On the night of the proposal, Ms Flansburg came home and said she was getting tired of the game.
"It freaked me out but I persuaded her to carry on by telling her she was just 15 minutes away from the coolest quest in the game," Mr Spiess said.
"I pointed her towards the mountain I had created, and left her to it.
"While she was playing through it, I was acting casual and desperately trying not to loom.
Ms Flansburg was initially confused by the coincidences between the game and her life, Mr Spiess said.
"Then she saw her actual name on the screen, and she turned to me looking kind of puzzled and said, 'How did they get my name in this game?'"
"She saw that I was on one knee with the ring. She did a double take, re-read the proposal, and nodded yes.
"Then she told me 'You are such a nerd!' before giving me a big hug, telling me how much she loved it, and then asking a load of questions about how I managed to do it.
Surprisingly, Mr Spiess is not the first to propose with a hacked video game.
Last year, a man spent weeks hacking the popular game Bejeweled to propose to his wife with a pixelated ring that appeared in the puzzle.
The game's publisher, PopCap, responded by flying them to Seattle for the wedding and giving copies of Bejeweled to guests.
And just this week, US technology blogger Grant Robertson used the micro-blogging service Twitter to propose to his blogger girlfriend, Christina Warren.
As for Mr Spiess, he is "delighted" that he was able to make a memorable proposal to his girlfriend.
"Now it's the first thing she tells everyone about us, and she has invited all her friends over to see it firsthand."
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