I gotta say I'm shocked. I was all ready to get into another pointless debate about FF7,8 when drunkninja tossed me a curveball.
I also spent irrational amounts of time on chocobo side games. Did you like the golden saucer too? A couple of those games were actually cool.
Did you know that FF11 has chocobo raising and you can ride the bird once it's an adult? It also has racing but you don't get to actually race so it's dead in the water.
Btw I've posted this pic alot but it's relevant to this...
That's one of my characters riding her red chocobo. It has large crown feathers and a big beak because it's raised for intelligence rather than speed.