I was wondering.... We all know that the Chao from Sonic Adventure idea came from the Artificial IA from Nights: into dreams but...where did the physical design of the Chao came from? I remember seeing back in the internet a lot of time ago about a very old and obscure japanese SEGA game, probably for SG-1000 or early Master System, who featured some characters who looked exactly like chao, but red. I remember seeing it in GHZ..but that site is now offline and I'm not 100% sure that it was there. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Is there such a game?
I thought this was fairly common knowledge actually! Yeah, a nice bit of trvia for you The design comes from Sanrin Sanchan. Chao bear a striking resemblance to the character of Sanrin Sanchan in that same game- a 1984 coin-op on Sega System 1 hardware. They probably thought no one would notice as Sanrin Sanchan isn't exactly a household name but it's also more than likely just a cheeky reference to the old game.