One of the more exciting surprises in Earthbound happens when you visit the lost underworld, a land of colorful geysers, palm trees, and huge dinosaurs. When you first arrive you’ll find the camera is zoomed out so that Ness and friends are a quarter of their normal size. Your movement speed has been similarly reduced so that it matches the scale. It really makes you feel like you’re exploring a huge ancient world. The enemy dinosaurs roaming the land remain a normal size and they tower over your characters. When you get into battle with them, their sprites are double the normal width of an enemy so they really appear to be gigantic.

It reminds me of Mario 3, when you first run into the scaled up enemies. It’s a delightful surprise. It’s neat how you can play with scale in sprite based games.