Thank you! Very high praise, glad the game resonated with you so much.
I wouldn't say we ever considered working with real hardware, since we wanted to use whatever software we were most comfortable with in order to get things done quickly (this was built in GameMaker), but we did wonder how much of the game would be possible, especially considering the detailed art and animations. We mostly assumed it would be way too much, so it's cool that you think it could maybe be done.