I don't know if this is patched but I noticed that the moment you get a game over screen, you get booted back in the title screen instead of spawning back at your save point
Viewing post in Bound to the Dark World comments
when you die in earthbound, it doesnt reset any of the event flags. nearly everything that happens in bound to the dark world is EXTREMELY flag-dependent, and unless we made a new script changing every needed flag at every single save point, it would break something every time you died. however, if the game resets, all flags go back to how they should be