Kid Icarus DX 1.0 finishes a full Game Boy Color colourisation of Of Myths and Monsters
Version 1.0 of pikamus's fan patch, released on 23 October 2026, colours every stage, enemy and fortress of Pit's 1991 Game Boy game and adds optional NES music and a title screen Options menu.
AI-drafted from 5 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.
Pit's 1991 Game Boy adventure, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, never got the Game Boy Color treatment that Nintendo gave Tetris, Zelda and Wario Land. A fan has done it instead. Kid Icarus DX, by pikamus, reached version 1.0 on 23 October 2026, after a run of test builds that started with 0.9 on 20 October.
Time Extension wrote about the project in September, while it was still a work in progress. The 1.0 release notes say the colourisation is complete. The last two changes were restoring Pit's laurel crown and finishing the colours in all three fortresses.
What the patch changes
According to the project's README, there are palettes for the opening scroll, every stage, side rooms, fortress chambers, enemies, bosses, the inventory and the ending scenes. It is more than a palette swap: the work includes artwork edits, replaced backgrounds and a pass to keep shared sprites and animation frames the same colour wherever they appear. The scrolling and sprite palette code was also updated for the Game Boy Color hardware.
There is a new Options menu on the title screen with four settings:
- Arrow hair colours, on by default, which changes Pit's hair colour as his arrow strength goes up.
- NES stage music, off by default, which swaps in Game Boy arrangements of themes from the NES Kid Icarus.
- Fast Pause, on by default, which opens the inventory straight away instead of showing the blinking PAUSE screen first.
- Treasure hint, off by default and listed under Cheats, which marks the treasure that hides the God of Poverty.
Settings can be saved between sessions. The NES arrangements cover the title, Worlds 1 to 3, all three fortresses, the bat challenge rooms and stage 4-1, and the README is clear that they are arrangements for Game Boy audio rather than exact NES playback.
How to play it
Kid Icarus DX is an IPS patch, so no game is included. You need your own unmodified USA or Europe copy of the original game, which the README says is 262,144 bytes, and an IPS patcher. The README gives a checksum so you can confirm you have the right file before patching. The result is a 512 KiB ROM that has to run in Game Boy Color mode; it does not work on the original monochrome Game Boy.
pikamus lists what has not been checked yet. Real hardware and flash cartridges have not been tested, a complete playthrough is still to be done, and some background effects and the ending need review. The patch passed the project's own automated tests, which the README says do not replace a full playthrough. Bug reports go through the GitHub project. It is an unofficial fan project with no connection to Nintendo.
Sources
- Kid Icarus DX v1.0 (GitHub)
- pikamus/KidIcarusDX (GitHub)
- Kid Icarus DX Brings Colour To The World Of Everyone's Favourite Game Boy Cherub (Time Extension)
- Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters DX Release! (Reddit r/romhacking)
- Discussion: Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters DX Release! (Reddit)
Image: Screenshot: pikamus, Kid Icarus DX