Eagle-eyed Sonic The Hedgehog players are discovering a rare phenomenon within the Chao Garden of the Dreamcast era: their pet Chao can get sick. Both 1999’s Sonic Adventure and 2001’s Sonic Adventure 2 featured the Chao Garden, a virtual mini-playground where players can collect, hatch and raise their own adorable blue creatures using various fruits, toys, and power cells collected from the main quest. Players could also have their homegrown Chao compete in various minigames like races and karate matches for prizes, and the Nintendo GameCube remakes of both Sonic Adventure games allowed them to take their critters with them on the go by transferring them to their GameBoy Advance.

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Despite the Chao Garden’s popularity, the mode would be discontinued after Sonic Adventure 2 – and the Chao themselves would see a reduced role in later Sonic games. This last part has started to change in recent years, with Chao appearing more frequently in tie-in media like IDW’s Sonic The Hedgehog comics and a cute and festive Sonic holiday web-animation in 2019. The recent Chao renaissance has gotten some Sonic fans feeling nostalgic for the old Chao Garden, and one even went as far as to remake the popular Chao Garden mini-game using Dreams. Meanwhile, others are still diving into Sonic Adventure 2’s take on the Chao Garden, and are even finding rare, hidden details, even two decades after Sonic and company last took up the fine art of Chao raising.

As reported by The Gamer, a ResetEra user recently posted an interesting discovery about the Chao Garden. Once every 6000 interactions, a player might find their Chao suddenly coughing as if they have a cold. Other character animations for this rare occurrence include sneezing, an itching rash, and the poor Chao clutching their upset stomach. Thankfully, there is a doctor on hand (and not Sonic’s longtime nemesis Dr. Eggman) on hand at the Chao Health Center, and after taking a large cough drop, the previously sick Chao is good as new and ready to continue playing with its brethren in the Garden. Despite how rare it is for the Chao in Sonic Adventure 2 to get sick like this, the Chao Garden features a surprising amount of character animations for it, which can be viewed in YouTube user SapphireChao’s video below.

It’s a good thing the Chao have a doctor on hand, because fans are hoping that the Chao Garden will make a comeback in the upcoming Sonic Frontiers. This exciting new title looks to take the long-running Sonic The Hedgehog franchise in a new direction by placing the titular hyperactive hedgehog in a vast open-world similar to games like The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild and Kirby And The Forgotten Land, and the developers at Sonic Team have revealed that Sonic Frontiers will utilize different fighting styles with which the Blue Blur can take down his enemies. However, many of the Sonic franchise’s older elements will appear in Sonic Frontiers, such as longtime Sonic The Hedgehog comic writer Ian Flynn helping pen the game’s plot and Adventure-era composer Jun Senoue lending his talents to the soundtrack.

Fans are hoping that the Chao Garden of the Dreamcast generation will end up being one of those older elements. It clearly has some longevity to it, since Sonic Adventure 2’s popular side activity has proven to be so varied that players are still discovering new situations for their Chao to get in even 21 years after the mode last appeared in a Sonic The Hedgehog game.

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Source: SapphireChao/YouTube, ResetEra (via The Gamer)

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J. Brodie Shirey
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J. Brodie Shirey is just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe, but aren’t we all? He currently lives in York, Pennsylvania. He is a big comic book, video game, and science fiction fan, and likes writing articles for ScreenRant or scripts for some of his crazy TV show ideas.

A graduate from York County School of Technology, he’s self-published several books on Amazon, and once won 1st place at a regional computer fair for a CGI animated short. He might post it on Youtube someday. He hopes that working for this site will be his first step into the larger universe of online writing, since Megazord technology hasn’t been invented yet and he doesn’t seem to have any Force powers. You can check out his work at The Uncanny Fox, purchase his books on Amazon.com, see his posted scripts on Script Revolution, or see his portfolio here or here. He can also be followed on Twitter @FoxUncanny.

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