A video game fan proposed to his girlfriend with gold coins in a specially-designed level of Super Mario World.

The lovestruck techie used a level-editing programme called Lunar Magic to spell out "Lisa will you marry me?" The man's girlfriend of five years was completely unaware of his intentions when he suggested she play Mario on their old Super Nintendo console. He secretly recorded her delighted reaction in a video posted on YouTube.

"On October 15th 2009, it was our 5 year anniversary so I decided to propose," he wrote in a blurb accompanying the video. "She may not look too surprised in the video but you should have seen her afterwards, she couldn't sit still. And no it wasn't staged, but I did sit her down told her to play some Super Mario World, but she totally didn't know she was being recorded."

The man, who lives in New York but did not identify himself in the clip, is not the first romantic geek to propose through a video game. Last year, a software programmer from New Jersey reprogrammed his girlfriend's copy of puzzle game Bejeweled so a ring a dropped down when she reached a certain score.

Ah yes... I remember editing a copy of "Philosopher's Quest" but the silly woman took the diving suit instead!

I was gutted when she couldn't get past the Dragon Queen on level 28...

The original was here