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This Guy Hacked The Legend of Zelda For a Marriage Proposal

This article is over 9 years old and may contain outdated information

James Dowdell, a software engineer from Mountain View, California, reprogrammed The Legend of Zelda to propose to his girlfriend Natalie.

“It’s dangerous to go alone. Take me!”

According to Natalie Martin, her boyfriend James began locking himself away in his office for hours at a time several few weeks ago. The two enjoy playing through video games together, and although they were already on Majora’s Mask, James talked Natalie into replaying The Legend of Zelda.

“A highlight of our lives is getting together on the couch for play throughs of video games. The Legend of Zelda for NES is my all time favorite game. I got this ingenious little plan a few months back; I would schedule a play through with her, on original hardware, but have the game ask her to marry me when we beat it together,” Dowdell wrote on Imgur.

James had spent countless hours over the course of a month reprogramming the game, which included adding bunny ears to Zelda to represent Natalie, and the words “Natalie, will you marry me?” Instead of holding up the Triforce, Link held up a ring. He also included the “you got the thing” tune, with the words “…Now you’ll always hear this as ‘you got the ring!'”

“As soon as I turned to him and said, “Of course I will marry you, stupid!” my next question was, ‘How??? Your cartridge?????'” Natalie wrote on her blog.

Dowdell expected glitches, but the game played without issue. The proposal, of course, included a custom made ring.

Images via funnybunnyphoto and Imgur.

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