We should call ourselves very lucky for having had the chance to take Justin away off his ferocious car driving bear from Enviro-Bear 2010! What started as an epic joke became an iPhone gaming sensation.

After unforeseen delays, we’re finally bringing you our epic interview with Justin where we dissect his mind full of wacky imagination, such as this one where he wanted to make a car driving bear. We’ll say it now, you’d WANT to read this one as Justin has definitely become one of the coolest, funniest and most personable devs out there.

Who Is THE Justin Smith?

Frankly, we still don’t know the exact answer to the question. He sort of just rose from nowhere with an insane game and had as all listening. We tried to ask him the very same question, and here’s what we got:

I used to be programmer in the games industry. My biggest claim to fame is an old game called MDK2. But after being stuck in too many offices with broken A/C I left that world to join Enviro-Bear Corp., which is a massive organization known to have business in the areas of fruit picking, ski lift operation, and occasional game development.

What can one say after hearing that? Umm that Justin is a rockstar?

We Know A Bear Craps In The Woods, But Drives Too?

If you’re reaction upon seeing the game was: HOLY SHABAM WTF IS THIS SH!T?, consider yourself normal. Thankfully, we had the courage to see what the freak it’s all about and man were we stunned. In a game where you have to feed a hungry CAR DRIVING bear of fish and berries and let him hybernate, this one’s surprisingly good. As good press people, we tried to find out where this silly idea came from:

Enviro-Bear was originally made for a contest to make games that prominently feature a cockpit. So with that in mind, I was playing with a physics sandbox, and just at the right second a neutrino shot through my hippocampus and triggered the memory of a bear I once saw while camping. Then I chose a car cockpit because it has a lot of moving parts, and I know what one looks like. I can only draw stuff that I know what it looks like.

As far as the decision to using MS Paint-y graphics: “I used billboarded sprites instead of full 3D because billboarded sprites have more indie cred.”

The Creation of an Epic Game

Off the bat, Justin said he lives like a “hermit”. He fed off the internet for tutorials and stuff for iPhone coding. It took him 1 month for the PC version (umm, Justin where is it? Steam?), and 2 weeks for the iPhone version. The overall approval process he said was pretty painless.

Monster Hit!

The game came knocking our iPhone gaming doors without any precedence or marketing before hand. Someone saw the outrageous looking screenshot, a few were brave to jump in, said it was great, and the rest is history! And because he hasn’t learn the “exact numbers and memorize it”, Justin gave us stats of Top 80 Canada and Top 50 US for estimated chart ranks. We can safely say those were pretty accurate.

Regardless of its highest chart position, we can still call it pretty sweet how he and the game came from absolute nowhere to selling great and getting featured on G4TV Attack of the Show!

Future Plans: Skiing Bear?

Few people will wonder, what other epic things can he whip up AFTER letting a bear drive a car??!!!

I’m going to do updates until the sales drop off. What do bears dream of when they hibernate? That’s one clue. And the hula-girl will be epic! I’m also prototyping a stereoscopic 3-D mode, the red/blue glasses thing. Oh, and OpenFient, I’ll jump on that pronto.

Get it? When I said a character, he really is one! Hell, I can’t really tell which one’s he’s really inserting into the game. Does anyone have any clue what a bear dreams of when they hibernate? And 3D?

As far as future epic undertakings, he’s hoping to build a Statue Liberty like monument in the West Coast…. well not really:

It’s not a wolf driving a motorboat, or a lemur driving a bicycle. I just code random stuff until I find something that feels like magic. Then I’ll go to sleep and if it still feels like magic in the morning, I will put on my artist gloves and start drawing.

Unfortunately, if you’re craving for some new Justin Smith goods, it “will probably be done sometime around 2013. I’m incredibly lazy.” We hear ya Justin! Can you maybe do some adjustments for your really hardcore fans? We can’t imagine waiting that long! This isn’t the next Indiana Jones sequel you’re creating!

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Well wasn’t that one interesting interview?! We totally didn’t know what to expect of him when we tapped him for July DoTM. I wasn’t aware of his amazing interview skills when we tapped him for DoTM so you can scrap the theories. It sure doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the funnest interviews we’ve done.

To Justin: keep making those crazy games and bending the norm. This society needs a little shaking and Enviro-Bear just did that. We can’t wait for your second coming…