I swear I devoted like three-hundred plus hours as a kid just to raise them and nothing else.

I'd even do hard missions if it meant I could unlock Chao stuff. XD

Have you played on computer with the Chao World Extended mod? It adds so much new content like better chao AI, more interactions with each other, noticeable personalities, color mixing with breeding, and options to make raising/leveling easier or harder. Highly recommend!

Holy cow. That's a thing? I need a link to it.

You'll need the SA2 Mod Loader to start with. Download this one first, you'll add mods to it; https://gamebanana.com/tools/6333

https://gamebanana.com/mods/48840 Here's Chao World Extended! (updated 2 weeks ago, so I'll be reading through those update notes!)

Thirdly, I also recommend Krzys2's Chao Editor! https://gamebanana.com/tools/6874

Quick warning with the cheats from the mod loader, stuff like infinite lives and infinite rings never go away even if you deactivate them. You have to reinstall your game to get rid of them. The infinite rings cheat will also break the "collect 100 rings" challenges for levels.