Developer Mike Mika hid a marriage proposal in Klax for Game Boy Color, but his girlfriend needed four years and a gaming magazine to discover it.
Mike Mika had already put his marriage proposal into a video game sold to the public. Getting his girlfriend to actually play it proved considerably harder.
In 1999, the developer hid a proposal to his girlfriend, Micki, inside the Game Boy Color version of Klax. Every commercial copy carried his question. It would take years, repeated hints and an intervention from Tips & Tricks magazine before the intended player finally saw it.
A Marriage Proposal Behind an “Invalid” Password
Atari’s tile-stacking puzzle game was a promising choice: Micki liked puzzle games, and Mika was working on its handheld conversion. Recalling the project in a 2013 WIRED interview, he said the team had finished ahead of its six-week deadline, leaving room for hidden extras. One of those extras had rather more riding on it than a high score.
As Mika told Kill Screen, he inserted a picture of the couple taken with a Game Boy Camera, along with his proposal. Then he made it exceptionally difficult to uncover accidentally.
Players had to enter a particular password ten times. The game appeared to reject it, but persistence eventually revealed the message. An effective way to keep strangers out; a fairly ambitious set of instructions for someone who had no idea she was being proposed to.
Mika supplied Micki with codes and encouraged her to try the game. Nothing happened. He considered asking her directly, but work kept him busy and the elaborate proposal remained unfinished business. The cartridge had shipped. The engagement was still waiting on someone to press the right buttons.
The Magazine That Finally Got Her to Say Yes
The breakthrough came when Tips & Tricks requested unpublished cheats for its 100th issue. Mika offered his secret, and the magazine printed instructions addressing Micki personally.
Kill Screen places the discovery in June 2003, roughly four years after the game’s release. Mika left the magazine and Game Boy ready for her, then went out. As he explained to WIRED, staying home risked her simply asking him to enter the code himself.
This time, she reached the proposal. She called him and said yes.
They married the following year in Kauai, and Mika made another game for the occasion, Tropical Wedding, distributing it to guests on CD. Micki thought it was too difficult. Even after successfully getting engaged through a cheat code, the developer still had some work to do on making games his wife wanted to finish.