This came from Kotaku reader Daniel, who is friends with Chad H., a librarian at the U. of North Carolina. Chad and his girlfriend, Melissa, recently constructed an arcade cocktail table using IKEA furniture and an old laptop. Building on that success, and his girl's love for Ms. Pac-Man, Chad set out to make an in-game proposal.

First he intended to create a custom level, with the dots spelling out the question. "I quickly realized this was essentially impossible - I'd have to learn how to hex edit a level by hand, from the ground up. So I turned to altering the graphics somewhere in the game."

But his searching turned up an old ROM editing program called Turaco, which hadn't been updated since 2000 and only runs in MS-DOS (and not at all in Vista.) Using that, he edited the "Act 1" scene board to spell out the proposal.

Chad writes that, for all the work, the message itself was only on the screen briefly and could easily be missed. So he talked Melissa into playing the game, and told her to pay special attention during the first intermission. Good news, it worked! And you can see it animated here.

Congratulations Chad and the future Mrs. Chad! Now, just remember what happened in Act. 3 ...

Ms. Pac-Man Engagement [Hidden Peanuts, thanks Daniel]

In Brian's words:

"I came home from work with the ring on Wednesday, and while she was attending her grad school classes, I got to work on a custom level that would successfully convey my intentions.

"I first tried spelling out 'Will You Marry Me?' but the limitations on the level's file size wouldn't allow it, so I then settled for the abridged version, "MARRY ME?" I set the match time limit to infinity, and then simply set up Mario, Peach, and Kirby (her favorite) around the level so that the camera was zoomed out as much as possible and the entire message fit on the screen. I then turned the TV off and just waited for her to come home.

"When she went to watch TV, the first image that appeared when the set powered on was my level. At first she asked, "Oh, are you in the middle of a game?" But after she noticed the small box in my hand, and I insisted that she give the TV another look, she figured out what was going on."

"Oh, and she said, 'Yes!'"

And, genuinely, best wishes from Kotaku for your new life together.

Update: Brian writes to say his fiancee's name is Allison, and your kind words and reactions mean a lot to them.