Dash Of Destruction
- Brand
- Doritos
- Year
- 2008
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- NinjaBee
- Added
- October 2026
- 1
Players find the game free on Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360, available in all Xbox Live regions, and download it (a 512 MB storage device is required). On launch, the player picks single-player or local split-screen multiplayer and one of four interface languages.
- 2
The single-player campaign opens with the player controlling a tyrannosaurus in a top-down city block, chasing Doritos delivery trucks; a quota tracks how many trucks must be eaten. Movement uses a single stick plus one button for a dash attack, and the dinosaur can smash through buildings and go off-road, leaving a trail of destruction rather than sticking to streets.
- 3
Each session is a race between two counters: the player must eat the required number of trucks before the trucks complete their own delivery quota. The dinosaur campaign runs six levels, with the quota rising each time and new complications added — obstacles, more agile trucks, and a rival dinosaur also trying to eat trucks first.
- 4
Progress through the dinosaur campaign unlocks cosmetic "cybernetic" upgrades that change the dinosaur's appearance without affecting gameplay.
- 5
A second campaign flips the roles: the player drives a Doritos delivery truck, running over chip bags scattered through the city to fill a delivery quota while a tyrannosaurus chases the truck and tries to eat it. On some levels a rival Rogue Delivery Truck also appears, stealing bags and delivery credit from the player.
- 6
The truck campaign also spans six levels, with completed stages granting a cosmetic truck upgrade plus a boost to acceleration.
- 7
Achievements unlock in rapid succession during normal play, with all 12 obtainable in roughly 20 minutes; in-game dialogue jokingly eggs the player on to "get their Gamerscore on."
- 8
Local split-screen multiplayer (single console only) lets players choose between Zen and Chaos modes and pick a side — dinosaur or truck — racing to complete their quota first. In Zen, roles swap on a successful eat or escape (the eater becomes a truck, the eaten becomes a dinosaur); in Chaos, roles are fixed for a straight race to the quota.
- 9
All content can be finished in about an hour, after which players either replay levels for faster times or bring in friends for split-screen matches.
Objective
Doritos was building a consumer-driven marketing platform around the brand, inviting fans to pitch their own game ideas rather than just watching an ad. Partnering with Xbox let Frito-Lay plant the brand inside a console audience it already shared with Microsoft, while Xbox used the tie-in to drive traffic and sign-ups to its new Xbox Live Arcade service.
Solution
The game opens on a top-down map with a delivery van and a hungry T-Rex, and the player takes either side: steer the van to drop off Doritos bags at marked stops before time runs out, or take control of the dinosaur and chase the van down, smashing through obstacles to catch it. Rounds are short, scored sprints — dodge or collect along the route, then see a results screen with your score and a prompt to go again. Along the way the game needles the player to chase its 12 achievements, several of which can be cleared in just a few minutes, nudging them to keep replaying to pad their Gamerscore.
Results
- 1M+
- downloads on xbox live arcade
Became the fastest Xbox Live Arcade title to reach 1 million downloads and set an XBLA record for first-week downloads, according to Doritos and Microsoft. The concept itself was crowdsourced from over 2,300 submissions in the Unlock Xbox contest, narrowed down to 5 finalists before the winning pitch was chosen.
Can you still play it?
No: Dash of Destruction was only ever a free Xbox Live Arcade download, and it was pulled from the Xbox Live Marketplace between late October and late November 2010, after its licence ended. Players who downloaded it before then can still redownload it, and it also appeared on a demo disc with Official Xbox Magazine issue 96 (May 2009).
