Linking

Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2 Battle can both be linked up to Tiny Chao Garden, allowing you to transfer Chao and items back and forth between them. To do this, you need to use the Chao Transporter. There is a Chao Transporter located in every Chao Garden in both games. The Chao Transporter offers four functions, but only two are related to the Tiny Chao Garden: “Drop off”, and “Pick up”.

Obviously, you will need a Game Boy Advance. You will also need a GameCube to GBA link cable; this is different from an ordinary GBA to GBA link cable. Connect one end of the link cable to your Game Boy Advance, and the other to one of the controller ports on your GameCube. You should make sure that your Game Boy Advance is turned on, and that you have the Tiny Chao Garden open if you are using Sonic Advance, Sonic Advance 2, or Sonic Pinball Party.

Drop Off

The “Drop off” function allows you to send a Chao from your regular Chao Garden to the Tiny Chao Garden. This function will only be available if you step onto the Chao Transporter whilst holding the Chao.

If you have Sonic Advance, Sonic Advance 2, or Sonic Pinball Party in your Game Boy Advance, then you must be in the Tiny Chao Garden for this to work. The Chao will be transferred and saved in the GBA game. You can disconnect the GameCube to GBA link cable and even turn the GBA off entirely. Your Chao is safe in the game cartridge.

If you have no game cartridge in your Game Boy Advance, then a temporary Tiny Chao Garden will be downloaded to it. This will take a few minutes. A backup clone of your Chao will be made on the GameCube game. Once your Chao is transferred to the GBA, you can disconnect the GameCube to GBA link cable (if you want). You can play with the Tiny Chao Garden for as long as you have battery power. If you turn off your GBA before transferring the Chao back to SADX or SA2B, then you will lose any progress. However, you can get the backup clone back. This only applies to the temporary Tiny Chao Garden.

Pick Up

The “Pick up” function allows you to transfer a Chao, an egg, rings, and/or fruit from your Tiny Chao Garden over to your regular Chao Garden. You will not be able to access this function if you are already holding a Chao.

If the Chao or egg was originally created in the Tiny Chao Garden (i.e. you hatched the Chao on there, or bought the egg from the shop), then there is something worth mentioning here. The Tiny Chao Garden does not generate faces (the eyes and mouth), and so that information is instead randomly generated every time a Chao or egg is sent to the GameCube.

There is a glitch in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. If you are playing on SA2B, then you must always exit the Chao Garden after performing a “Pick up”, or you could lose your Chao and/or items! This problem is fixed in Sonic Adventure DX. See the Glitches page for more information.

Cloning a Chao

The Tiny Chao Garden can be used to clone a Chao in SADX or SA2B. This is just one of many methods to clone a Chao, so you may prefer to use another method instead. To clone a Chao with this method, you will need two memory cards. Then, follow the steps below.

1. Using the first memory card, enter the Chao Garden on SADX or SA2B.
2. Pick up the Chao that you want to clone, and take it to the Chao Transporter.
3. Connect your Game Boy Advance to the GameCube using a link cable. Make sure there is no game cartridge in the GBA, and then switch the GBA on.
4. Use the “Drop off” function to transfer your Chao to the Game Boy Advance. A temporary Tiny Chao Garden will be downloaded to the GBA, and a backup clone of the Chao will be made on the GameCube.
5. Load your game from the second memory card. You can do this by restarting your GameCube, or by going to the options menu.
6. Enter the Chao Garden and return to the Chao Transporter.
7. Use the “Pick up” function to transfer your Chao back from the Game Boy Advance to the GameCube.
8. Use the “Move” function of the Chao Transporter to move the Chao from the second memory card back to the first memory card.
9. The backup clone of your Chao should still exist on the first memory card, along with the one that you just moved across. This means that you have successfully cloned your Chao!