Curtosy of Akane. Again: https://retrocdn.net/File:BeepMD_JP_1992-11.pdf (Retro CDN is being strange today so no thumbnails there) I still think there are two Sonic 2 Mega Drive prototypes that were given to the press between the Simon Wai build and whenever Beta 4 was compiled - really the only clue at this stage are Tails' life icon in 2-player mode - they've tried to hide it here, but you can see in one shot that Tails is called "Sonic". Things: - Full HUD in 2-player mode - Referring to Emerald Hill Zone as Green Hill Zone (though the coverage itself calls it Emerald Hill??). This is fairly late in development so there might not be anything juicy here, but if nothing else, that's a new prototype shot of the Game Gear version.
Note that Aquatic Ruin Zone is still using the older underwater palette that tints the rings and white blocks purple (This also makes the HUD harder to see, which is probably why it was changed). This was changed before Beta 4. However, the waterfall splash tiles, which were fine in the Simon Wai prototype, have been corrupted by this point.
Also, there's an extra screenshot on page 22 showing Emerald Hill's boss sprite in 2 player mode. Eggman's nowhere in sight though.
So, proper Tails icon with "SONIC" letters... May be this version: http://www.sonicdatabase.com/S2/S2B3.htm (Don't mind the "Beta 3" nomenclature, it was just an estimate from back then)
Also worth noting that unless they were exceedingly lucky, both Sonic and Tails still seem to be sharing a HUD (i.e. the score/ring counts are always the same).
