Gamesmaster "Sonic2 beta" footage

This certainly is a great find. Now I may be stating the obvious here, but does the fact that EHZ was still called GHZ back on this beta that Sonic 2 may have been planned as a continuation in the story. I have always considered the two to be completely seperate games in terms of story lines, even though I guess in a way the two stories are loosely related. I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe Sonic 2 was intended to be more of a direct continuation from Sonic 1 than what we had when Sonic 2 was finally released?