Will you marry me? After this game, dear

Many men try hard to make a unique proposal to a girlfriend, but few dedicate themselves as much as Phill Spiess, who hacked a computer game to pop the question.

Spiess, a computer software engineer, spent weeks making a custom level in the game “Chrono Trigger”, a game available on the Nintendo DS.

“I wanted to propose in a unique way and had bounced several ideas off our friends,” Spiess told Greenpixels.com. “I really wanted to do something more memorable than just dropping to one knee in a restaurant.”

On the night of the proposal, his girlfriend, Annie Flansburg, said she was becoming tired of playing the game, but Spiess insisted she continue.

“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,” Spiess told news.com.au.

“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. 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.”