Prototype documentation
This article and its subpages is intended to provide documentation for Burnout's various prerelease or otherwise non-retail prototype builds, as well the terms surrounding them.
Burnout
The first Burnout game has two demos; the first was compiled one day before the final retail build, so while it still counts as a prerelease, it is virtually identical to the final game. The other, known as the "Trade Demo", was actually compiled three days after the final retail build. Strangely, unlocking the menus of the latter reveals the version code of the build: "Beta v0.88", which is odd considering this is a post-release build.
Point of Impact
Burnout 2: Point of Impact has a single full prerelease build, dated August 31st, 2002, about a week before the final build's date of September 5th, 2002. As with B1's demos, and as expected from a build this late in development, it possesses virtually no differences to the final version, save for the main executable being a different size.
The sole exception to the recurring rule is Burnout 2's prerelease demo, compiled on August 6th, 2002, almost a month before the final build. It has also had its main menus unlocked to reveal minor, mostly cosmetic differences.
Takedown
Two publically available builds of Burnout 3: Takedown's PS2 version exist. They are the "Review Build", built July 20th, 2004, and a promotional demo built on April 28th, 2004. Recently, the latter was patched to sport functioning menus, revealing otherwise hidden content, so it is considered a prototype of its own as well.
The Review build was publicly released on August 15th, 2020.
Legends
There are two publically available betas of Burnout Legends - the first is a "normal" build dated July 8th, 2005 that is commonly referred to as the "Demo Build", due to it being discovered on an Official PlayStation Magazine demo disc.
The second is fully debug-enabled and was presumably compiled on June 6th of the same year; it's usually referred to as the "Game Sharing Build", due to its executable being discovered hidden in plain sight among the files of the July 8th demo in the place of where a Game Sharing executable would normally be (UPLOAD.DAT in the game's DATA\ folder).
Revenge
The Alpha 7 PlayStation 2 build of Burnout Revenge was leaked circa January 2019. It has a build date of July 14th, 2005 and contains a relatively large amount of differences to the final version despite being relatively close to retail, most notably the presence of debug symbols in the build's executable. Indepth documentation of this build can be found on TCRF.
Various PS2 and Xbox demo builds of Revenge also exist. The first of these, a demo featured in Madden NFL 06's Xbox version, was compiled May 29th, 2005; nearly three months before the game's final build.
Dominator
A late build of Burnout Dominator's PS2 version marked "Production 10" was leaked in the Alpha Archive Discord server circa July 2020 and released on ObscureGamers near the end of that same month. It consists only of the game's executable, and while it is not a prerelease build (compiled a week after retail), it is fully debug-enabled in the same vein as Burnout Legends' June 6th build. Also, akin to the Alpha 7 build of Burnout Revenge, it has full debug symbols.
Paradise
Two very early development builds of Burnout Paradise (then known as Burnout 5) were released in 2019.
The first of them is dated November 13th, 2006 and is mainly known as the Franchise Build or just the 2006 build. It's quite complete despite being quite an early (and buggy) build; all of its files were recovered and thus is fully functional. This build was leaked on February 16th, 2019, and hastily released by burninrubber0 soon after.
The second is dated February 22nd, 2007. It was in a significantly more damaged (and initially unbootable) state than the November build, due to the Xbox 360 devkit it was discovered on having been used multiple times over. The build's restoration to a bootable state took nine months in total and was completed circa late 2019; this was done by using files from the November build and remnants of an unrecovered build dated January 24th, 2007, as well as recreating missing files from scratch where necessary. It was publically released on December 2nd of that same year.
Other miscellaneous builds of Paradise exist from around the date when the game was finalized; some of them are debug enabled. More information on them can be found in the list below.