Originally posted by: SoleGooseProductions
Zelda Classic has some similar things, if I recall (I used to mess around with it many years ago), and there were always just weird dead spaces where they lengthened the screen. It's been a while though.
Edit: Just to clarify. When I think of really good game design, like what we see in Zelda IV, I tend to look at it like a fine Swiss watch. If you want to re-size the watch, you can't just simply blow up the pieces, or add dead space to the frame without altering the contents. It's an integral whole. Just my philosophy with game design.
For an example of the reverse, check out Spiritual Warfare for the Game Boy. Here the frame was too big so they introduced scrolling instead of re-designing it to fit. Definitely loses the feel of the original, which I find to be well designed.
I think it's a matter of where and how the space gets added.
Buffering around the outside of the original screen shouldn't cause any issue, and could probably be done in a way that was aesthetically pleasing and not distracting.
I mean really, it's something you'd need to address screen-by-screen to determine what is best in each condition.
But if you expand the status bar, you could probably chew up MOST of the Y-axis discrepancy with no effort, at all, and it reduces to figuring out what to do with the extra x-axis tiles.