This being Faceball which was a based off Midi Maze suggests that the game was seen by someone at BPS and then licensed to/by Nintendo/BPS for sale on GB then VB.
The educated thought would be that the team was only maybe two/three people and they handled not just the dev but also the business side. This is partially backed up by the info on the Wiki for MIDI Maze:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_MazeThe team are not Japanese going from the names. This would lead me to believe that the game was sub-licensed to another dev for console release. This is speculative as the wiki goes on to mention that the original devs (Xanth Software F/X) had a vision of coverting the Faceball formula to Game Boy early on.
Clarity needs to be established here. BPS published only. Quickly skipping through the wiki entries for BPS/Henk Rogers gives no indication that they had internal devs so I can only presume the development was either by a staffer at Xanth or it had been outsourced to someone for dev or to a larger company. Can anyone with an understanding clarify this information? Did BPS have internal devs on their payroll?
Again the source code of the game would be a derivative version from perhaps another source. The question is: What computer/console most fits the VB spec in terms of similar performance and chipset and also had a version of FB developed for it? This might give you clues as to the individual who developed it. (As a sidenote to this... Would it be sensible to assume that if there is a machine with a VB-esque spec, could that mean an easier process to make/dev for VB??)
The Wiki says that one person would handle a specific conversion... So the question is who handled the VB proto? Internal BPS/Outsourced/Xanth staff?
I would postulate two concepts:
The first is that BPS hired someone to cut the code from another version and the spruce it up 3D-style for VB. This would save money and give something saleable quickly as Faceball was doing good business on the various formats and it being simplistic 3D would give it an edge on VB I am sure.
The second is that one of the coders of the other versions simply ported over and rounded off/cleaned up a version they did for another console/computer... This, in fairness, is just speculation and really we cannot determine anything from the current info.
The gentleman/whomever released the pics and got permission for release of the proto must have some 'love' for collecting or gaming generally or why have something like that just laying around? Further if he had to 'ask permission' then this means that he is obviously 'below' the person involved in some way. The only logical solution is that he is a staffer and the person who has the rights is obviously 'the boss' or 'high up' type individual. Who knows? Personally its too 'detective' for me. I am just very pleased that FB is going to be released.
I apologise if this speculative post has missed some points. I just find the history of this quite interesting...