There's some bugs with the peelout in Sonic CD. There's certainly shenanigans to be had. (This does not apply to the remake, as that implemented it differently)
The 2013 remake of Sonic 2 directly ported the Death Egg Robot from the original game, but broke the way its arms launched at Sonic.
Unreferenced demo data exists for special stage 2 in the v0.51 prototype of Sonic CD. It never gets decompressed into the demo data buffer nor does the code to run it get called. However, with some hacking, it can be restored.
Due to the demo programs in the Japanese and PAL versions (not USA) of Sonic CD being built off of a prototype, they retain the logic for enabling debug mode by pressing start on player 2's controller. You can do this so that you don't need to enter the code in the sound test.
There exists a collision bug where the check used to prevent Sonic from clipping on top of a surface he's too far below from isn't done if he's moving horizontally in the air. This can easily be seen if you put a solid object on a top solid surface and hit it from the bottom.
Here's a silly difference between the 510 and 0.28A (512) prototypes of Sonic CD. Special stage rings always appear in 510, but never in 0.28A. 0.28A added a ring count check, but only checked the top byte. As a result, they can only appear if the player has at least 12800 rings.
Loops were planned on being implemented in Chaotix, even being present in prototypes... yeah, I can see why they were removed (footage provided by @MDTravisYT)
There's a ROM hack of Chaotix called Knuckles' Clackers by GenesisDoes that reimplements loops, and even uses the masking sprite... but it still illustrates the problematic nature of loops with the tethering mechanic.
(You can find the hack here: sonicresearch.org/community/…)


