Part 55: The Bonus Menu

Music: Corpse Party



Today we're looking at the Bonus menu, home of Soulful Testimonies and other wonders.



We're just going to work our way down this menu one option at a time, starting with Unlock Status.



It's pretty self-explanatory. (Note: These screenshots were taken after completing chapter 8)



The Gallery of Spirits is just a CG list.



As you see various CGs throughout the game, they're added to this menu. You can use it to look at all the dead kids and panty shots your heart desires. There's also a nice bonus if you played the first game.



The very first time you boot Book of Shadows, it asks to check for Corpse Party data. If it finds it, a couple of things occur. First, it changes the unlock conditions for chapter 8. Chapter 8's regular unlock condition is to see all endings for the first seven chapters, including Wrong Ends. If you import Corpse Party data, you only have to see every True Ending.



Importing Corpse Party data also adds every CG from the first game to the Gallery of Spirits. There's no way to obtain these CGs without importing a save.

The game will only prompt you to look for Corpse Party data the very first time you start it, but any data will do. Even if you don't complete a single chapter of Corpse Party, you'll unlock every CG and the unlock condition for chapter 8 will be changed.



Continuing down the list, we have the Cursed Phonograph, which is just a silly way to say "Sound Test."



The Cursed Phonograph contains every song from Book of Shadows. It does not contain any music originating from the first Corpse Party however, even if you imported a save. It has a surprising number of playback options, and even cycles through your unlocked CG images while you listen.



You can sort your songs into a playlist if you'd like, which is fairly simple.



Less simple are the options across the top. The far left setting lets you choose between a straight arrow, a circle, and two arrows forming a circle. What these do isn't explained anywhere, you just have to experiment to figure it out.

The arrow sets the songs to play one at a time, in order. Once it reaches the end of the list, playback ceases.
The circle sets a track of your choice to repeat indefinitely.
The two arrows forming a circle will play each song one at a time, in order. Once it reaches the end of the list, it loops back to the start.

This all seems fairly obvious, but it took me awhile to figure out the difference between the arrow and the two arrows, since I never listened to all 71 tracks in a row, and I didn't bother with playlists until trying to figure out what those options meant.



The second option lets you choose between Full and Intro. Full will play the full song, while Intro only plays the first five seconds. Why anyone would pick Intro is beyond me.

The third option allows you to change your CG options. The choices are All CG, Mark CG and CG Off. Mark CG will only show you the CG you've marked over in the Gallery of Spirits, so you can cut out all those nasty gore pictures if you don't want to see them while listening. All CG and CG Off are fairly self-explanatory.

Video: The Cursed Phonograph



The unusually large number of violent images can have oddly comical results when paired with a completely inappropriate song. The video above demonstrates this.



Moving on from the Cursed Phonograph, we have the EVP Machine. The EVP Machine is a bizarre contraption which unlocks upon the completion of chapter 8.



It's got a large collection of voice clips from the game (but not every clip!), and you can sort them into a playlist and create conversations with them. It's very silly, and I don't know why anyone would go through the trouble of combing through all these clips to make something, unless they were thoroughly showing all of the game's features to people on the internet, or something lame like that.



The EVP Machine contains all your favorite voice clips, such as Yuka's famous line: "I have to... I have to find...somewhere to hide..."

Some characters are less represented than others, unfortunately. Sachiko has 91 clips to choose from, while thread favorite Yoshiki only has two. They picked two really good ones, though!




I'm glad they selected Yoshiki's two most iconic quotes for use in the EVP Machine.

Video: EVP Machine



I took the liberty of putting together a video to show off the EVP Machine. It also shows off my immaturity (or rather, my inability to put anything together other than the lowest of low hanging fruits, despite my best efforts)

Judging from the EVP Machine's description, it seems they only included binaural voice clips, while anything that's centered between both speakers was cut. I think that's a stupid distinction to make though, because it causes you to miss out on some of the game's best lines, such as all of Kizami's English babbling. It also makes it really hard to put together any sort of coherent conversation, because your pool of voice clips is so limited. I spent 20 minutes in this thing and I honestly couldn't make any sort of logical conversation between two people that wasn't lifted straight out of the game; everything I put together was either nonsensical or sounded dirty, so I eventually gave up on it. And a part of me really wanted to use that bizarre 30 second clip of Seiko breathing heavily, because I think it's really funny that it's even in there (and I have no idea where it shows up in-game!)



Last on the list are Soulful Testimonies, which you should all be familiar with by now.



For completeness' sake, here's a screenshot of the Soulful Testimony menu.

And that wraps up our look at the Bonus menu! I hope you all enjoyed this look at something very few, if any, of you care about. Bye bye!