Winter Zone (Please help)

[Paraemon]

It screams nothing, except that you've needlessly resized sprites to incorrect parameters in an effort to fill empty space, and the quality either has decreased from before or remained the same. Also, what was wrong with your original thread?

I'm going to be as nice as I can, but I need to remain critical of this.

Key issues:
- The aurora was a lot more natural looking in the old version. Now it's just a bunch of rows of pixels on the horizon.
- In an clear effort to make it unique, you've taken the objects you sourced from Dolphman and rendered it into largely one color. Now it's worse. Even in the 8-bit games, there was discernable detail in the stage pieces. Here, there's not, and just comes off as lifeless.
- The Badniks are an improved attempt and good, but they're not "Tom Payne's scrapped Badniks". Derived from? Yes. Not his.
- The background before had some character, basic as it was. But now, it's just a bunch of lines pixels and polygons. The stars could at least be a bit more diverse - look at stages that use stars - Death Egg Zone, Carnival Night Zone.
- The palette is inconsistent - look at the RGB values used for the Snowman. They don't match those of Robotnik.
- Apparently there's an underwater section - which means there'll have to be a different palette for the underwater pieces.
- The water surface looks nothing like a water surface. I don't think I've seen chunky pieces dotted across the top of the water in a Sonic game; it's always either smooth or wavy.
- You could get away with making the Hill Top Trees more teal in color (and also adjust the color of the trunk) if you were intending on Christmas trees.
- The shading on the ice gun thing for Robotnik could do with having a darker bottom and the shine raised a pixel or two. Some extra detail too, so it doesn't feel tacked on.

It is clear to me that you didn't properly take on board my suggestion to analyse the Sonic 2 backgrounds. By extension, analyse the Sonic 2 graphics. How it's shaded, how it fits together. The most accurate thing relative to the unique content, is the ice block, and that's at a stretch, what with the dark shading on the outer edges. That way, you can figure out how to shape and shade the unique content you're hoping for.