Rocks'n'Diamonds

I was watching a YouTube video from the channel 'Vinesauce: The Fullsauce' being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKjbzHOXW3o - where Vinny has a recurring segment they stream on their Twitch account (and upload the VODs on YouTube) where they would play and sample a series of ripoff games and clone games from plug and play systems. For this video, what I caught my attention is on https://youtu.be/sKjbzHOXW3o?t=2367 - named Lucky Lawn Mower, where the gameplay looks akin to a Boulder Dash-like game, and that's where having the video as background noises ceases to be at this moment.

Just to note, this group of games that Vinny is playing through during the video is handpicked and sent by someone or a group, as the name 'Vinesauce Family Fun 61 in 1' implies it's not an official bootleg collection that was done by manufacturers that are looking to make a quick buck. I would have to ask Vinny, or someone in the Vinesauce community to try to lead me to where I can find this game more easier.

However, the thing with Lucky Lawn Mower is that there's barely any info of this game out there on the internet, since the other other source of content video-wise is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eDczstFtE0 - from petsasjim1. I do ponder if this game is an original creation, or something that's ripped off from an existing property or game out there. From my limited experience with bootleg games, signs lean towards no at least for Lucky Lawn Mower.

Before making observations, I used a image snippet tool to get images taken from the two videos, and due to being just screenshots of the video and not native images,the images were crunched further down with 256 colors for better compression when posting these on the topic.

Onto observations and note-taking from Vinesauce Vinny's YouTube video:

• When starting the game, there's an endless cutscene of the lawnmower going through the grass from the left to right, and collecting the diamonds that appear at random spots as the lawnmower gets close.
• I assume the endless cutscene stops when Vinny presses any button to get to the first level, as there's no title screen or even a level select, just straight to the game.

• level 1 shown in full (even labeled at around the bottom-middle side of the screenshot), nothing larger than what the screen is, since this level is a single screen level.
• You indeed control a lawnmower as the player character, first seen at the bottom-left side of the screen.
• Boulders fall faster than the player's movement, watch out!
• There's 1 minute and 40 game seconds as the time limit in level 1, as the 1 game second as it ticks down is faster than an actual second.
• The player has 2 lives, and a health bar. 0 isn't the final life the player has, it's 1. Getting hurt by a falling boulder takes half of the health points, and being caught in an explosion by the blue vehicle at the bottom right side of the level takes a full bar of health points. When losing all lives, they're taken back to the endless cutscene where they most likely have to start all over again at level 1.
• The amount of gems needed to collect in level 1 is 19, as the top number decreases while the bottom number increases for each gem collected.
• Gems vary by appearance, which includes the treasure chest, but they all give one point, but I have no idea if gems fall the same way as boulders.
• There's a score system, and the amount of points earned entails:
  • Digging 1 tile of dirt - 10 points.
  • Collecting 1 small gem - 40 points.
  • Collecting 1 medium gem - 50 points.
  • Collecting 1 large gem - 60 points.
  • Collecting 1 treasure chest - 80 points.
• There's a blue vehicle at the bottom right which when exploded doesn't give gems it appears, I assume it's an enemy similar to a Firefly from Boulder Dash, or a Spaceship from Emerald Mine.

Unfortunately Vinny was unable to finish the level, as they left to play other games after being caught by the blue vehicle's explosion.

Onto observations and note-taking from petsasjim1's YouTube video, as the video appears to be stretched widescreen instead of the proper screen ratio:

• Oh! We might have a source on where this game came from, it looks to be from the Classic Max Lite 120 in 1, which is copyrighted 2009 by Junglesoft.

• Under the 'Action' section, Lucky Lawn Mower is found as the 15th game in that section.

• Curiously, while the overall cutscene is the same, the amount of individual colors shown on the screen has been reduced, more 8-bit looking than 16-bit looking.

• Yep, and this extends to the overall gameplay and how it looks too, but it looks to be overall the same, nothing missing or added.
• There is one notable observation that Vinesauce Vinny's video didn't show: When collecting all of the required gems, an exit appears at random. The location being random is noted when the player died the first time after collecting all the gems by running out of time, and when they got all the gems again, the exit appears in a different location this time. I wonder if the game can spawn the exit in an unreachable location, that would be bad. The exit spawning at any location is a pretty neat novel thing that I have yet to see any other similar game in this specific action puzzle sub-genre do this at all, but I'm sure there might be some problems behind that.

• There's more than one level, as this is level 2 as shown fully, but unfortunately they couldn't finish level 2 upon dying during the level as the video ends.
• There's 1 minute and 20 game seconds in level 2.
• 20 gems are required in level 2 to beat it.

Of course, there's bits and pieces of information out there regarding Lucky Lawn Mower, but that would be for another time, as I spent a lot of time typing up all the information and took screenshots to make sure this has some comprehensive coverage for anyone curious or into Boulder Dash-like games to find out. Perhaps someone else curious enough can research such information in the internet, or find a way to play this game.

Did a bit more digging around on trying to find anything remotely related to Lucky Lawn Mower, and found https://manuals-help.ru/manuals/defende ... 100/m7160/ - for which this is a manual for a bootleg game device called 'Sharky' or 'Sharky Legend 100', and it's made by a company called Defender. Unfortunately, both of the websites on the front of the file that made this product doesn't appear to exist anymore, so I have no idea if they just grabbed a bunch of games and pass it off as their own or what.

I grabbed the .pdf from the website and uploaded here for prosperity incase that website ceases to exist: Checking in the file, Lucky Lawn Mower would be found as the number 79, just wild. It looks like the screenshot is of someone playing level 2, with most of the dirt, or grass tiles dug out.

If wanting to check it online instead, refer to this link for the page the website shows for you: https://manuals-help.ru/manuals/defende ... /t-30.html

As I was about to just submit this reply, out of curiosity, I decided to check the whole manual and saw that there's another Boulder Dash-like game called Jewel Quest, which is number 93 (which you can see online through https://manuals-help.ru/manuals/defende ... /t-34.html ), but the screenshot tells me things, level 1, that's the same level layout from Lucky Lawn Mower. The art direction is different from Lucky Lawn Mower, but this is baffling to me. Which came first? Or are both from the same developer? Maybe it's padded out with duplicate games? Wouldn't be surprised with these bootleg game devices or bootleg cartridges.

Trying to search up 'Jewel Quest' for that specific kind of game would be difficult, since it shares the same name as a match-3 game that was developed and published by iWin and first released on 2004 October.

There's a fair bit more to talk about and try to investigate on Lucky Lawn Mower, the breadcrumbs in the internet, and again, I'll eventually get to digging into this if no one else is curious, but this came up into my vicinity on it's own and wanted to talk about it before I forget about it.

Resuming my researching attempts on Lucky Lawn Mower, from what I can find thus far, there have been multiple instances of the game being mentioned in a couple of websites. The notable thing that was mustered from all of this is who made the game, but there's more than one developer or publisher in this instance?

Some instances of who made Lucky Lawn Mower is from JungleTac, if at least from https://gamescribe.ru/games/lucky-lawn-mower - https://kotaku.com/games/lucky-lawn-mower - and https://www.igdb.com/games/lucky-lawn-mower - I don't know where it is sourced from, probably IGDB? Saying this since I have no idea if the websites just have gotten the sources from IGDB and have it as a basis for their own take of video game databases, or if it's sourced or scraped by people themselves. If it is the former, it's because of https://www.igdb.com/api - IGDB allowing anyone to use their data for their own needs, since the latter would be too time consuming and likely require volunteers. It's hard to say since it's not really readily documented online, or in a way that's findable online and not basically deep web stuff.

Unfortunately, there's garbage entries like https://trugamer.com/game/lucky-lawn-mower where the info feels all wrong, FromSoftware? The people who worked on the Dark Soul series, and later on, Elder Ring? This kinda feels like generative AI slop from looking at the description.

However, in the earlier post, the game was shown in the 'Sharky' bootleg gaming device, by Defender...which confuses me. Is Defender another name for JungleTac or are they two separate companies?

...And checking more manuals like https://cdn4.sharperimage.com/si/pdf/manuals/209933.pdf - Lexibook Compact Cyber Arcade (I uploaded the .pdf for preservation purposes) And https://pyleaudio.com/Manuals/PLVWGM3.pdf - the Pyle view (also uploaded to preserve it). I remain mystified that it's in multiple bootleg devices, by multiple companies it appears.

I then found https://talking-time.net/index.php?thre ... ost-158665 - originating from this topic thread, which there's a game called Diamond Gate, which is just another version of Lucky Lawn Mower, seriously? The screenshot that was given is more or less the same too, if looking through the fuzziness, with the only stand out difference is the boulder art. I looked at the other posts in the topic and looking at https://talking-time.net/index.php?thre ... ost-155190 - they've played something called the Lexibook Cyber Console Center...which is another Lexibook device variant?

Looking at the posts from the person playing through the Lexibook Cyber Console Center, Jewel Quest is shown once more via this post: And there's indeed Lucky Lawn Mower from this post: From what I understand reading the posts, Jewel Quest has slightly different level design compared to Lucky Lawn Mower, which there are no additional images to showcase from that forum topic, since each game covered only has a single screenshot attached to it.

If anyone has any info about this game, Diamond Gate, and Jewel Quest, both of the latter looking like a copy of Lucky Lawn Mower, please share it here.

The only way more info can be gotten is getting the game in some way, similar to how Vinesauce's Vinny has obtained the game from a collection of bootleg games.