Ego Trip: Martin Hollis

Welcome to Ego Trip, a new Develop feature where we ask the finest game development talent a series of questions about the toughest subject of all – their own games.

In the chair this month is the lovely Martin Hollis. Here he is:

He’s in a barber’s chair. Thought it was clever.

PROFILE

Name: Martin Hollis
Famous for: GoldenEye 007
Answering questions on: Bonsai Barber

Let’s play.

How many fruit and vegetable characters were there in total in Bonsai Barber?
There are 13 characters in the game, but only 12 were fruits or vegetables.

What was the name of the game’s strawberry character?
Strawbinski. I hope so. I should have done revision for this. I really have to get them all right.

What is the name of the first character to get a haircut in the game?
Now, this is difficult as when we developed the game we kept changing this around. It used to be Strawbinski but in the end we went for the potato guy. What was he called? It’s gone. He was definitely a potato.

(Correct answer: Spudsworth, who was indeed a potato)

What was the profession or lifestyle choice of the cactus character?
He thought he was Texan, but it was fake. He was from Dagenham. I’d assumed he was probably a hairdresser, a taxman or a stenographer, but he thought he was a cowboy.

What parody genre title was applied to Bonsai Barber by many press?
I know this well as it came from us. It’s ‘first-person groomer’. I was very pleased with that one. We all felt a bit anxious about it really, as we couldn’t decide if it was too clever or not clever at all.

Can you name every tool available to use in Bonsai Barbor?
Firstly there’s the holy triumvirate of the scissors to destroy, the water sprayer to create, and the comb to change. Then, layered on top of that we had the paint brush, the camera and… Oh dear. It’s been so long. What else do hairdressers need? We didn’t have towels or razors. What about gardens? We didn’t have seeds. Oh dear. I’m sure there were seven.

(Correct answer: Clippers, Scissors, Water Sprayer, Comb, Camera, Paintbrush, Gong Mallet)

1. Martin Hollis (4/6)
2.
3.
4.
5.

Ok, Martin gets first place by default, and frankly he’ll be hard to beat. But look at it this way. Currently he’s also in last place.

Over the coming months you’ll see this leaderboard evolve into a defining list of industry masterminds (or a high score board of game development’s most ambitious egomaniacs, depending on how you look at it).