maybe tails will be sonic? so sonic's misions are race blaze, kinda like sonic rush, y'no? and of course sonic will follow blaze in levels and also assist blaze alot in storyline (lets just say tails has alot of things that sonic can use, like the tornado.) And maybe Silver can be used to replace Metal Sonic. Silver wasnt in rush, but he was in Sonic '06, where blaze assisted him. Metal Sonic is a cameo character, so whoever replaces him should be a cameo character, therefor silver.
I think you should look at this video for blaze's jumps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2h3tZy-h54Zarosguth was able to transfer the spinning motion sideways in the jump, and gave the ball model a new model. You should do that with blaze, since that is what she does in rush, where she turns into a fire tornado and spins horizontally to jump and for spinball and spindash. If you are planning to do something serious with this mod, ill be happy to help, otherwise, these are just suggestions.