Promo Tails, Knuckles & Amy Chao to US SA2B Hiccup

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Dyneya
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Promo Tails, Knuckles & Amy Chao to US SA2B Hiccup

Post by Dyneya »

:thinking:

Hello everyone! I've just gotten sucked back hardcore into playing with the Chao Gardens on my GameCube and am curious if anyone can help me.

I have recently learned that Japan got immortal, promotional character Chao of Tails, Knuckles and Amy! In the US we only had access to the Tails one via the GameCube Phantasy Star Online game, never to Knuckles and Amy. Doing research, I couldn't seem to find anyone else who has tried what I'm now attempting to do.

All 3 character Chao can be obtained from a 2003 Summer E-catalog Japanese disc. Using my Free Loader region lock breaking disc, I can run that disc and download a Tiny Chao Garden onto my GBA using the GBA to GameCube link cable that holds one of the three characters I pick (I tried Tails first since his data should be in our game). When I go to my SA2B game and try to bring them in, my system recognizes the GBA is on, but doesn't seem to see the tiny Chao garden that is running.

Any ideas on how to complete this process? My dream is to get these into my game, and eventually offer them to other people, but this puzzle has gotten difficult. I'm not sure if the US game just has no data for them, or if I perhaps need to get a Japanese copy of SA2B, put them on that, but idk if you can transfer Chao between a US save and a Japanese save. GameCubes will usually format memory cards to match the region of the system.

Thanks for reading my novel of a post XD
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Re: Promo Tails, Knuckles & Amy Chao to US SA2B Hiccup

Post by Eru »

Knuckles and Amy are definitely only accepted by the Japanese copies of SA2. You will need a JP copy of the game to accept it. As to whether chao can be transferred between US and JP copies I am unsure, as like you said inserting the memory card into a different region system will normally just format it before you get chance. I assume the change performed that allows the Japanese TCG to be detected would also cause the other region's file to not be seen by the game however.
:thinking:

Most people usually perform these transfers using a modified ISO of the game, or a hacked Wii (I can't tell you how as per the rules). If you do manage to get this to work I'd love to hear how you did it! :surprise:
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Re: Promo Tails, Knuckles & Amy Chao to US SA2B Hiccup

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

I believe the reason the download step works is that the GBA itself isn't region locked, and while I'm pretty sure the Gamecube is region locked, even if it wasn't, there would likely be compatibility issues with any interaction between different region versions of the same game or cross-regional connections between compatible games... e.g. even if you uploaded the Chao to SA2B JP, I doubt you could redownload it to Sonic Advance 1/2 US or to go a bit further a field, I'm pretty sure you could play JP Pokemon LeafGreen on a US GBA, but you still wouldn't be able to trade with US Ruby.

That said, the data for Amy and Knuckles Chao does exist in the US versions of the gamecube games, and if memory serves, there were GC Action Replay codes to turn Chao into Knuckles or Amy Chao... and I think there were also GBA GameShark/Action Replay saves and/or codes for them as well... if I remember correctly, it's just a matter of changing the byte that codes evolution to one of the next three values after Chaos Chao(I'm pretty sure a full chart was posted on here somewhere, but I think it went something like egg, bneutral baby, hero baby, dark baby, a few unused values, neutral, hero, and dark for each of the five stat types, the Chaos Chao, and then the character chao... which I believe also leads to a glitch where Amy Chao are treated as Hero and Knuckles Chao as Dark for entering Hero and Dark races).

Granted, some of those old hacking devices might be hard to come by these days and Nintendo might have figured out how to block their use on Wii/DS, so you might need original hardware to use them, and the software for managing the code database and saves might not work on modern Windows. Whether these make hacking the Wii/Wii U easier, I have no idea.

And while I had a GameShark SP... and might still have it, I'm pretty sure the GBA-USB cable that came with it was lost or damaged many, many years ago, and even back then, I never got much use out of the companion software due to my transition to Linux. Sadly, even if my old GBA SP still works, has my Gameshark SP in it, and my copy of Sonic Advance hasn't gotten lost(my copy of Sonic Advance 2 was lost many years ago), blindness would make testing pretty much impossible.

Also, since Character chao are just evolutions as far as the game is concerned, Hacking allows you to get them in any breed of Chao, while the official channels only ever offered them as normal, non-shiny, two-tone chao... I remember footage of a hacked Shiny Tails Chao and a Tikal-colored Knuckles Chao from the days when the Gamecube was still current gen.
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Re: Promo Tails, Knuckles & Amy Chao to US SA2B Hiccup

Post by Dyneya »

:surprise:

I appreciate you two replying! Seriously! It's actually given me an idea!

Do you think it'd be possible to transfer the character Chao using Sonic Advance as a connection with a Japanese SA2B?

In theory, maybe if I get the Japanese copy of the game I can send the character Chao of choice to it, then maybe, just maybe!, I could transfer it to my tiny Chao garden in my Sonic Advance copy. From there, I could try transferring the Chao over to my US copy. The GBA is not region locked, and I don't thing Sonic Advance is either. Do you think this could theoretically work? If so, I may buy a Japanese copy and see!
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