Not a lot to see besides clouds in various shapes and sizes, and in different positions behind the action. If you really want to know, there are three layers of them. Nice, big fluffy clouds along the top and bottom on the front two (plus an occasional large column of cloud across the middle layer), and little, far away ones casually floating by behind them. The sky is a clear blue colour, possibly late morning or afternoon. At one point, the action stops when you fly past Robotnik's Wing Fortress, including sight of a big chunk of the ship, taken directly from the layout of an early part of it, plus fins and propellers etc. More from that in the next level.

Absolutely nothing but rings and badniks here. The fact that the Tornado follows you around means that you can sometimes jump and land on it, but at the same time, make contact with one of the badniks. This will cause you to take the hit, because your landing has caused you to stop spinning. Fortunately, there are many groups of rings everywhere, so keep your reactions quick and your attacks well timed and you should be fine. Try and stay far to the left, so you can react to what's coming. Badniks are also very plentiful, and they always come at you in clusters.

There are three, fairly simple types, each moving at a different speed as they appear on-screen. Balkiry are the red, eagle-like fighter jets that fly across the screen from the right, at varying speeds. They're easy to kill and cause little bother, and if you miss them, they won't come back to annoy you. Nebula are weird little helicopter badniks that drop spiked balls from their bottoms. They come along in clusters of up to six or seven, in various formations, and hover slowly across the screen, moving up and down occasionally. They can be dangerous when you're taking on a vertically aligned grouping of them, so it's always best to start by smacking into the top one, because of the spiked balls they drop. Finally, Turtloids are little turtle robots that ride on the backs of much larger tortoises. These fly very slowly across the screen, again in groups, and they don't move down or up but the daddy of the twosome does shoot out an occasional tiny projectile from its mouth. You won't be able to hurt him, but you can take out the little guy on top, who controls the big sleepy-looking beast. With him gone, the tortoise (who never actually hurts you when you touch him anyway) remains to act as a completely harmless platform for you, until it departs to the left of the screen.

- Sky chase is known by Sonic enthusiasts to be a classic level type, and was later re-interpreted for Sonic Adventure in the form of a mini-game with two separate acts. Similarly, Sonic and Tails chase down the Egg Carrier, but this time, the view is taken from behind the plane and you have full use of a laser cannon rather than traditional spin attack methods, making this one a proper shoot-em-up challenge. It can also be found in the lesser-known Sonic Pocket Adventure, where it is very similar to this Sonic 2 original.

- This is the first time we actually see Sonic and Tails' plane in the entire series, and it's become a common staple ever since. Though Tails is usually seen as the pilot, the original Tornado is in fact the property of Sonic. Nowadays, they seem to fly various enhanced versions (or the same plane with new enhancements, it's sometimes difficult to tell), starting with the Tornado 2, which is purple, and transformable into a more maneuverable craft.