Love at First Byte

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Can you feel the love? You will after checking out three more gaming romances.

Link and Zelda

How do I love thee? Let me count the heart containers. Indeed, The Legend of Zelda franchise is a pioneer in the field of video game romance, featuring a life bar comprised of tiny hearts and epic, sweeping stories centered on the hero of Hyrule and his royal charge.

Except Link and Zelda aren't always the same people. According to the confusing Zelda mythos, gamers have played as a few different versions of the hero and the princess over the years. The only common threads are their names, their relationship, and their desire to save Hyrule from something big, bad and often named Ganon.

But whether Link is the "Hero of Winds" or the "Hero of Time," gamers can know for certain that the little dude in the green tunic will try his hardest to help out a girl named Zelda. And that's enough for us.

Portal Test Subject Chell and The Weighted Companion Cube

Love comes in many shapes and sizes, but even the most zealous of geometry students hasn't experienced the curious angles formed between the unwilling star of Valve's Portal and the mute, heart-shaped box she meets along the way.

Sound silly? Then you haven't played through Test Chamber 17, in which Chell is tasked to solve another round of dangerous puzzles using only her wits, her Portal gun, and the Weighted Companion Cube. In order to finish the grueling level, the handy Cube must be unceremoniously dumped into an incinerator. Heart wrenching stuff, and during the game's final level Chell is tormented by odd graffiti celebrating the life and death of the cube.

Still sound silly? Then you also haven't spent enough time on the internet lately: From plush pillows to PC case mods, the world is going gaga over the loyal square. Heck, a quick Yahoo! search for Weighted Companion Cube yields over 1.5 million results. If that's not love, we don't know what is.

Wander and Mono

The face of sleeping beauty Mono may not have launched a thousand ships, but it was definitely responsible for the brutal slaughter of 16 majestic stone wonders in Sony's outstanding PS2 game, Shadow of the Colossus.

If you're finding it hard to recall the specifics behind Wander and Mono's love affair, you're not alone: most gamers remember the heart-pounding thrills of scaling and defeating the game's titular stars, not its doomed couple. That also might be because we're never explicitly told why Mono is sick or how taking down these huge creatures will bring her back to life. But off we go murdering innocent giants, throwing our sense of morality in the air by killing in the name of love. That's some pretty potent mojo for a video game.

Nathan, Kelly, Garthan and Quaddra

Whozit and whatnow? While you might not know the names, you certainly know the game. These two (well, four) lovebirds met playing popular MMO Everquest and made history as the first couple to tie the knot in both the real-world and a virtual one during one blissfully geeky ceremony.

Nathan and Kelly, lifelong Everquest fans who knew one another prior to playing the game, exchanged their vows at Sony Online Entertainment's Fan Faire in August of 2007. A few moments later, they plunked themselves down in front of two PCs and repeated the process as Lord Garthan and Lady Quaddra, complete with an in-game mage shooting fireworks to commemorate the occasion.