Before the saga became famous for wrecking rivals, Burnout — Criterion Games' first game, published by Acclaim — offered something simpler and, at the time, stranger: a "boost" meter that filled up by driving close to danger, against traffic, grazing other cars or chaining drifts, turning every race into a constant negotiation between going fast and pushing your luck. There were no Takedowns or a Crash mode as they'd later be known: those central pieces of the saga's identity only arrived with Burnout 2: Point of Impact.
The Xbox version wasn't the first to launch: Burnout debuted on PlayStation 2 in November 2001 and reached Xbox and GameCube only in April-May 2002, half a year later, already as a conversion of a game originally designed for Sony's hardware. On Xbox the formula didn't change and no modes were added: it was, essentially, the same risk-and-speed proposition running on Microsoft's hardware.
This system doesn't run in the browser yet (Dreamcast, GameCube, PS2 and Xbox are on the way as web emulation matures). The dossier, media and community are already all yours.
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