Have you tried the suggestion of early Tails, adapted to orange colours, but with white fur on the mouth and belly? At the end of the day, it's your project, though. Do what you like.
This! You’ve got a nice thing going, rather than a big change to what you got, just some minor adjustments.
I got sick and consequently did have a chance to play through this. I had a really good time generally; playing a slightly "off" Sonic 2 with historical basis gave me nostalgia for growing up playing around with the Simon Wai beta (first thing I ever emulated) and it was a lot of fun. There's some things with the art that need tuning up (Wood Zone buzzbombers for one example, but I'm sure you generally know what I'm getting at). I very much enjoyed the new bosses in Sand Shower and whatever Wood is called now, they're not the most extravagant but they do a better job aping the boss design of those first 2 games a lot better than most other attempts (looking at you, Egg Trombone). The new art for those zones looked really really good too and I enjoyed the new art for Emerald Hill and Metropolis. The art for Sand Shower was from Pink Edition, right? It might even look a little "too good" in terms of detail, it looks a lot grittier than other Sonic 2 levels. Looking forward to further updates!
Thank you everybody for responses and experience! And well... it was interesting experience Thank you all for good words about project. We are still work to make a better experience. We did not pursue the goal of getting any prize, but rather to declare ourselves to the world (funny enough that on shc server I was banned after this words), and there were pretty a lot of reviews. It was different, from "OMG best thing in my life" to "authors are morrons, hack is crap, fans of it are crap eaters". Pretty lolz. Also our composer left project recently. We had some creative differences with him, so, he is no longer with us. Also, it means that vacancy is currently open, so, if you'll want.. you know. Also it was a 31 year of S2 last week. Happy bday, I guess. Also we are reimagening some zones, I hope we'll have something to show you later in December, when it will be one year for project. (CNZ currently is in prototype source code, so hud and Tails is different)