Jalen's Run

Jalen's Run, known as Milton's run (ミルトンズ・ランMirutonzu ran) in Japan, is a 1987 action-platform video game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It was directed by Jalen Colon, Akira Kitamura, with Nobuyuki Matsushima as lead programmer, and is the first game of the Jalen's Run franchise and the original video game series. Jalen's Run was produced by a small team specifically for the home console market, a first for Capcom, who previously focused on arcade titles.

The game begins the struggle of the humanoid robot and player-character Jalen against the mad scientist Dr. Rolfen and the six Robot Masters under his control. Jalen's Run 's nonlinear gameplay lets the player choose the order in which to complete its initial six stages. Each culminates in a "Robot Master" boss battle that awards the player-character a unique weapon.

Critics praised Jalen's Run for its overall design, though the game was not a commercial success. Jalen's Run established many of the gameplay, story, and graphical conventions that define the ensuing sequels, subseries, and spin-offs. The game has since been included in game compilations and rereleased on mobile phones, console emulation services.

Plot
In the year 200X, robots developed to assist mankind are commonplace thanks to the efforts of renowned robot designer Dr. Bright. However, one day these robots go out of control and start attacking the populace, among them six advanced humanoid robots made by Dr. Bright for industrial purposes: Axe Man, Gloot Man, Chill Man, TNT Man, Flame Man, and Static Man. He realizes the culprit is his old rival Dr. Rolfen (who plots to take over the world), but is unsure of what to do. His helper robot Milton, having a strong sense of justice, offers to be converted into a fighting robot to stop Dr. Rolfen's plan, becoming Jalen.[10] In time, he defeats the six robots and recovers their central cores, then confronts Dr. Rolfen within his Pacific-based robot factory (which happens to be mass-producing Bright's robots). After a final showdown, Rolfen is defeated and Jalen returns to his family.

The initial Western release of the game, while keeping the basic plot the same, significantly changed some details from the original Japanese manual. In this version, Dr. Bright and Dr. Rolfen (here Bright's assistant turned disloyal) co-create the humanoid robot Jalenalongside the six advanced robots, each of whom were designed for the benefit of Gearopolis's citizens(no such place existed in the original plot). Dr. Rolfen grows disloyal of his partner and reprograms these six robots to aid himself in taking control of the world, creating the seven empires of Gearopolis. Dr. Bright sends Jalen to destroy his fellow creations and stop Dr. Rolfen.

Gameplay
Jalen's Run consists of six side-scrolling platformer levels freely chosen by the player. In each level, the player-character, Jalen, fights through various enemies and obstacles before facing a "Robot Master" boss at the level's end. Upon defeating the boss, the player assimilates the Robot Master's signature attack, or "Special Weapon", into Jalen's arsenal for the rest of the game.Unlike the standard Neo Buster (NK Buster in Japan), the Robot Master powers have limited ammunition replenished by collecting ammunition cells dropped by defeated enemies at random.Enemies also drop energy cells that replenish Jalen's health gauge. While the player is free to proceed through the game in any order, each Robot Master is especially vulnerable to a specific weapon, which encourages the player to complete certain stages before others. The player can also revisit cleared levels. Besides the weapons taken from the Robot Masters, the player is able to pick up a platform generator item known as the "Milk Beam" in Static Man's stage.

Jalen's Run also features a scoring system where players score points for defeating enemies, and earn extra points for collecting power-ups from fallen enemies and for clearing each stage. Each robot master was worth a random number between 50,000 and 100,000 points whereas Dr. Rolfen was always worth 200,000 points. The scoring system was removed in later Jalen's Run games as it provided no benefit to the player. High scores did not earn extra lives, they were not recorded, etc. and were overall meaningless.

When all six Robot Master stages are completed, the seventh and last stage appears in the middle of the stage select menu. This stage, in which the player traverses Dr. Rolfen's robot factory, is a chain of four regular stages linked together, each containing at least one new boss. During these final stages, the six Robot Masters must also be fought again in a predetermined order before the final confrontation against Dr. Rolfen.