It began innocently enough with a post in the forum about IainA's day on the Burnout Team.

Then folks on the forums began to wonder how they might get their hands on Iain's Burnout mouse mat...

Never ones to pass up the opportunity to run a competition, while still giving Iain the chance to hold onto his beloved mouse mat, we present: Chubb vs. Angus.



At the end of next week, one of these guys is going to lose their Burnout mouse mat to the forum poster who posts their fastest combined Road Rule times on Chubb Lane and Angus Wharf.



Here's how it works:

Set Road Rule times for both Chubb Lane and Angus Wharf and post evidence on the forums.
(This will be your Road Rule times for Chubb Lane and Angus Wharf and your Gamertag/PSN id, if you can manage photo evidence too, that would be great.)

In the event of a tie-break situation, we'll check the players' Showtime scores for Chubb Lane and Angus Wharf - the person with the highest combined score for both roads will win the tie-breaker.

At midday UK time next Wednesday (21 May 2008) we'll check the forums for the winning time/Showtime scores, post the winner's name, and then...

Jez and Iain will compete head-to-head to see who can set the best combined Road Rule times on Chubb and Angus.

Whoever loses, will have to give up their mouse mat to the winner...

Here's a great mail to the mailbag that we just had to post!

"Salutations Burnout Demigods, I love your game and your "Live Development" style of handling the community that has grown around this awesome game. I took a quick picture of the Hunter Olympus parked on a Manhattan side street.




"Greg "Not Craig" must have been driving it on his many trips around the globe. I did not see him but there is a Western Union nearby so he must be picking up his fat wad of cash to spend on horse racing, stella and pizza. There are not many crack-heads to fight in Manhattan - our homeless are not that aggressive.

"That Greg sure does live the life of a rock star.I wonder where he'll show up next?

"PS Burnout Team Rocks!

"- Jackal888"

If you have no idea what Jackal888's talking about, you better check out Crash FM - our weekly podcast.

It's where we bring you the latest in-depth news from Criterion Games as well as highlights of Greg "not Craig"'s antics.

Hit the podcast banner to the right to find out how to subscribe.

If you're wondering why you can read a blog entry on criteriongames.com in Japanese and French today, it's because we're celebrating the arrival of our Japanese and French forums!

Today, we're going truly International, as we invite Japanese and French fans to join our community and discuss "The Year of Paradise" and Criterion Games in their native languages.



Why have we chosen these two languages?

Well, the original Burnout was inspired by Japanese coin-op racing games. It's in our heritage, and we want to invite our hardcore Japanese friends to contribute to our community.

And of course, the French are an obvious choice. Burnout has always been a huge hit in France, a nation of insane drivers, and you only have to take a quick look at our PS3 leaderboard to see how French players rule at the game.

We hope to bring you more localised versions of criteriongames.com soon...

Si vous vous demandez pourquoi vous certaines sections de notre blog sont en Japonais et en Français aujourd'hui c'est tout simplement parce que nous fêtons l'ouverture de nos forums en japonais et en français. En effet, � partir d'aujourd'hui Criteriongames devient vraiment international et permet aux fans français et japonais de Burnout qui le souhaitent de dialoguer dans leur langue maternelle.

Pourquoi le choix ces deux langues? D'abord parce que Burnout s'inscrit dans la grande tradition des jeux de course de voiture des salles d'arcade japonaises et il nous semblait donc logique d'inviter tous les fans japonais � jouer un rôle actif dans notre communauté.

Quant aux Français, ils constituent un choix évident puisque Burnout a toujours connu un grand succès en France -NDLR la nation de ceux qui conduisent du bon côté. Il suffit de jeter un coup d'œil aux Top 10 du classement mondial pour se convaincre qu’ils maîtrisent bien le jeu !

Nous espérons ouvrir de nouvelles versions localisées de Criteriongames .com très bientôt…

日本語でバーンアウトについて語り合いたい方、オンラインプレイの仲間募集、質問ご要望など、

こちらのフォーラ� を大いに利用してく� さい。

The Year of Paradise…　一年間を通して、バーンアウトパラダイスは進化していきます。

最新情� �をお見逃し無く！

When we created the pack image for Burnout Paradise, we gave the Rossolini Tempesta an awesome stencil treatment with Paradise City behind it.

But the Tempesta wasn't the only car to get the special treatment! Check out the rest of the set!

We'll give a t-shirt to the first 3 people to get a response to the mailbag that correctly identifies all of these cars.

Image 1



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Microsoft and EA are currently working hard to bring 360 players the revised Bogart software update on Tuesday 13th May.

We'll post the latest as we get it and keep you informed, if there's any change to this date.

For all you Canadian players out there, and that includes current Xbox 360 celebrities - chiefowner (1st place); bs000 (7th place) and WiTnEsSeS (9th place), we've got great news!

After much deliberation, the officials of Paradise City have finally recognised Canada as a nation of Burnout Paradise players.

To celebrate this landmark step forward in International relations, we'll be adding a Canadian leaderboard to our leaderboards page .

Our new Canadian friends will be joined by ambassadors from Denmark and Sweden - two more great Burnout-playing nations.

Look out for this change over the next week.

It'll take us a day to build the leaderboard, and the update will take place without interrupting server time as part of Tuesday's regular server maintenance outage.

After yesterday's clue, we saw some interesting guesses on our new content.

These ranged from planes (which we've already talked about) to big-rigs (which we haven't).

Nowhere near!

We think you'll be genuinely surprised by what we're going to talk about in the next podcast session.

Hit this link to subscribe to the podcast or tune in to our streamed video version here on Friday to find out what we're up to.

In the meantime, keep the guesses coming!

Wow! It's a while since we commented on the ranked race leaderboards and look how things have changed!

Hit this link to click through to leaderboards page or check out the top 10 boards in the banner to on the right of this page.

We're delighted to call out our first German player – Laubi - to top the PS3 chart and obviously happy to see the local boys in the form of Wip3outs, Ferrari_F69 and GuAnNiGt giving our French players a run for their money!