The way I see it, this would be the perfect way to produce semi-altered terrain sprites automatically. Right now,the textures are pseudo-randomly rotated for things like dirt blocks, grass tops, and stone. [1] However, with this you could create a multitude of different textures based off a single source.

Plus, dungeons could be a lot more interesting. It'd be interesting to see what could be done with it...

[1] - http://i.imgur.com/UJeLy.png