Nice, this looks great.
I kinda liked the sprite-based approach of the first one but this looks great as well!
And this one looks kinda like Sonic 2, in contrary to the first one, which reminded me of Sonic 1 somehow.
Maybe they`ll do it like this: S4:E1=S1 / S4:E2=S2 / S4:E3=S3; so that Episode 3 would be kinda similar to Sonic 3. So in the end Sonic 4 could be in itself a modernized trilogy, like Sonic 1-3K were
sonic 4 episode 1 was a remake of 2, and from the looks of the screensahots (ice cap zone) this will have stages remixed from sonic 3.
how the devil was sonic 4 ep 1 a remake of sonic 2? if anything it takes more inspiration from sonic 1 besides the fun aspect