First things first: The first thing you have to do is find a chao garden which are the places where chao's reside. The first one is located in Station Square. Go in the hotel area (the hub of polis and Emerald Coast) and take the only elevator that works up to the second floor, a chao garden should be there. The second one is located in the ic Ruins. There is a cave located below and to the left of Tails house, there should be a mine cart in the cave, jump in and it will take you to the second chao garden. The third is located in the Egg Carrier. Go inside the Egg Carrier (the area with the Ammo room, Reservoir room, and all the cleaner robots) and look for a door with alot of letter buttons in front of it, enter the code E-G-G-M-A-N and the door should open to reveal a teleportation pad, hop on and it will take you to the third chao garden.

What to do after you find a garden: In every garden there are two regular chao eggs, to hatch an egg you can do one of two things. Either throw the egg against a wall until it breaks open (I strongly recommend not doing this, it is a very bad start and alters the chao's personality to make it non cooperative and mean), the other method is to use the Y button to pick the egg up, hold up or down on the analog stick and the character you are using should shake the egg up and down, wait till the egg has been shook three times then set it down. It should jump up a couple of times and then break open to reveal a new born chao!

What to do after hatching an egg: After your egg has hatched you should get some food for your chao. A chao's favorite food is coconut's and conveniently enough, there are coconut trees scattered throughout the gardens. To get a coconut down from a tree get close to the tree and grab it with the Y button. Now hold left or right on the analog stick to make your character shake the tree. Continue shaking until a coconut falls down, pick the nut up with the Y button and bring it over to the chao. The chao should reach out for the coconut and make a "give me that nut" kind of sound. All you have to do is walk close to the chao and the chao will automatically grab it and start to eat it. Feeding your chao is very important because it keeps them happy and cooperative.

What to do now: Well, after you learn how to feed your chao you should try and complete some of the levels and earn alot of small animals that are trapped inside of Robotnick's robot's. To do this destroy an enemy and a small animal in a green orb should pop out, grab this animal and a small listings bar will pop up on the bottom-right side of the screen, this bar tells you what types of and how many animals you have collected. This bar can only hold ten animals at a time before it will start to delete previous animals collected to make room for new ones. This doesn't seem like a big deal at first but later on when you begin to raise the special chao's it becomes a pain.

What to do after collecting animals: After collecting a reasonable amount of animals you should return to the chao gardens. When you enter all the animals you collected should fly off of you. Now you have to let your chao's absorb the power of these animals (do it the same way you feed the chao coconut's) for numerous reasons. One reason is to raise the chao's stats for the chao races (more on this later). Another reason is to alter the color of your chao's and their physical appearance. The later works this way, all of the animals are classified in a certain color class. When you give your chao an animal it will absorb the animals power and do a little dance afterwards, if you feed your chao strictly animals of the same color class then it will begin to turn that color and develop certain physical traits that that color offers. Every color class offers different physical traits. There are five color classes, blue, purple, red, yellow, and green. I won't ruin the surprise of what every color's physical traits are but I will give a list of which animals are classified in what color class and what that color class' statistics are focused on.

• Blue/All: koala's, skunks, and moles
• Purple/Fly: blue jays, peacocks, and parrots
• Red/Power: gorilla's, lions, and elephants
• Yellow/Swim: penguins, bulldogs, and seals
• Green/Run: rabbits, kangaroo's, and deer

Note: I believe that there is one more animals for the blue class but I haven't found it yet.

What to do after feeding your chao animals: Actually, the animals collecting is mostly for the second reason I stated. To really get your chao's stats up you have to play the VMU mini-game, Chao Adventure. To do this find the VMU transport station in the chao garden you are in (there is one in every garden). Once you locate it grab the chao you wish to transport to the VMU and bring it to the VMU transport station. Step on the red button and put the chao down on the trap door. A menu will come up prompting you to select which VMU you want to put your chao in, after doing this the trap door will open and the chao will fall in, you will have to wait for a moment so the data can transfer and then the VMU in the game will make a little sound and a chao will appear on it saying "OK". Now you have a chao in the VMU.

The Chao Adventure: To play Chao Adventure you have to take the VMU out and select the second option on the VMU. The Sega symbol will appear then some legal text then the Chao Adventure title screen, press A+B and the game will begin. At the start you will see your chao walking, a tiny mail icon should appear in the bottom-left corner. Press A and the chao will send you a message telling you where he wants to go. Choose which decision you will make (it doesn't matter what you choose) and the game will start. What this mini-game basically consists of is your chao walking across various landscapes. The chao will encounter numerous events such as fighting another chao, finding a treasure chest, meeting a bird or fish, meeting a character from Sonic Adventure, or running across a fork in the road.The main thing you do in this game however is play the matching game on the menu screen which I will talk about in a second. First let me explain the menu screen, to bring it up press A and you will be given the choices of Status, Item, Game, Mating, Battle, Owner, Friend, Map, Setting, and Name. What the status option does is show the chao's name, mood, and health. press A again and it will show all four classifications of stats which are, swim, fly, run, and power. It will show how many points you have for each stat. The item option tells you what items you have and let's you feed an item to your chao. The game option allows you to play a little matching game where you must match two item cards until you completely reveal them all. It will briefly show all the item cards locations before the game starts so pay attention! You have three tries to win the game, if you win without any tries missed than you will get one of the special fruits, if you win with one or two tries missed you will get one of the regular fruits. Here is a list of fruits and what they do.

Special fruits:

• ChaoNut- All +4
• HastNut- Speed x2
• StarNut- Punch x2 (next battle)
• LifeNut- Life recovery
• LazyNut- nothing

Regular Fruits:

• Plum- Fly +4
• Lemon- Swim +4
• Grape- Run +4
• Cherry- Power +4

All the mating option does is allow you to hook two VMU's (they both must have a chao on each) together and the chao's will mate to produce an egg. The battle option is the same as the mating option except the chao's will fight. The owner option allows the owner of the chao to list his or her name, gender, birthdate, telephone number, interest, secret word, and time. The friend option tells you what friends your chao has. To allow your chao to have friends you must first name other chaos and then you have to get them all in a group in the chao gardens so they can interact. The map option tells you how far you have traveled in the chao's adventure on that particular landscape, press the A button again and it will show you what path you have been taking so far depending on what directions you took at the forks in the road. The setting option is like an options screen where you can turn the sound off or on, change or not change data, or rewrite all information you have entered. The name option let's you name your chao.

Raising statistics: As I have already stated, you must play the matching game at the menu screen to earn fruit. Feed your chao the fruit and his stats will increase, the more your chaos stats increase the stronger and more experienced it will get. There are other ways to get fruit besides playing the matching game. The first is to fight other chaos, there is no way to fight whenever you want, it is totally random. When you do get in a fight an exclamation mark and question mark will appear on the screen along with some flashing. Press the A button to begin the fight, you will be facing another chao. There will be a small row of black and white dots (more white dots if you have an experienced chao) and a dot indicator will run across the row of dots at a fast speed. To fight you must stop the moving dot on a white dot and not on a black dot. If you get it on a white dot your chao will throw a punch and hit the opposing chao. You will then be given another chance to throw a punch if you connected the previous punch, repeat the process until the enemy chao is defeated. After the battle you will be given a choice between three treasure chests (if you won). Pick a choice and you will be given a special fruit, a regular fruit, or nothing. Another way to get fruit is simple, you will randomly stumble in to treasure chests (I call them free chests) on you adventure, do the same thing you did after a fight.That is all there is to the Chao Adventure, keep playing the matching game, get more fruit, feed it to the chao, watch it's stats go up. It's that simple but it sure is time consuming.

Note: To get a chao out of the VMU step on the red button on a VMU transport station and a menu will come up, select the chao you want out of one of the VMU's and it will fly out of the VMU transport station along with any fruit it had remaining in it's adventure.

Preparing for the chao races: First of all, if you even want a chance at winning the races you will have to have a chao at at least 375 points of experience. If you want to be a dominator at the races then go all the way and max out your chao's stats like I did to 999 on every stat. If you do that then there is NO way you can lose. To enter the chao races you have to go through the double doors in the Station Square chao garden, once you do that you should be in a room with doors that have the number 1-8 on them, jump on the huge button that say's "enter" and a menu will come up allowing you to select which chao you wish to enter in the races. You can enter a chao from the garden or from the VMU. There are five races that vary in length, everytime you win a race in first you will be given a jewel (which is a sonic emblem). Another useless yet cool little thing that happens when you win race is that a tiny jewel will grow on the chao that won the races stomach. Win all five races and you have your extra emblems.

Special chao's: To get the special gold, silver, and black chao's you must find them first. The gold chao is located in the Station Square toy shop. Find the rock on the City Hall lawn and bring it in the toy shop, lay it down and pick up the gold egg. Lay done the gold egg and pick up the rock, lay the rock down on the pedestal that the gold egg was on and you may leave with the gold egg. The only reason you had to that is because the doors on the toy shop will lock you in if you try and leave with the gold egg without something taking it's place (shades of Raiders of the Lost Ark). The silver egg is located in the ic Ruins. Go to the area with the small pond and waterfall (close to the entrance to the large jungle area). You should see a strange looking platform behind the waterfall and if you look closely you will see the silver egg. To get it you have to go to the right side of the pond and push the brick type platform into the wall. the silver egg should pop out and fall into the pond, it will float toward you until it hits the bank of the pond, pick it up and bring it to a chao garden. The black egg is located in the Egg Carrier near Amy Rose's cell. This one is obvious, just press the switch to open the cell and take the black egg away. You can also reproduce the special chao's (and reproduce in general). When a chao reaches adult status and is ready to mate numerous flowers will sprout up all around that chao. This is your signal to mate. Bring that chao over to another chao and set it down close to the other chao. An egg should pop up out of mid-air. If you mate a special chao with another special chao you should get an egg that is one of the two colors of the two special chao's you mated (i.e if you mate a gold chao with a silver chao you will either get a gold or silver egg). You will have a very strong new born chao if both of it's parents were farely well built and experienced.

Conclusion: Well, that is all there is to it my friends. Just follow this guide and you should raise a very good chao. If you have any questions that were not mentionedin this guide e-mail me at hallex@scescape.net Thank you and goodnight.

VGAce