Check out David Jones' EEVblog, particularly episode 168. http://www.eevblog.com/

Part of the reason for the slow failure of the project is the suicide of one of the co-founders, Ilya. A death has a lasting effect on any project, particularly a small one by people new to the whole thing.

Apparently I don't know what "elide" means, I meant to say "discover the source".

Take a look at the website of the researcher who did the legwork here. He even gives a detailed description of the advanced tools he used (cut and sort :-P) to elide the source. http://intrepidusgroup.com/insight/2012/09/tracking-udid-src/

At that time Jordan kept a bunch of journals of the development process, they're all online. He even has video of the motion captures he did of his brother, these were used to animate the Prince and it's really uncanny to see how much of that came through in the game. Warning, if you click the link be prepared to waste a LOT of time reading, it's addictive. http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/1985/10/october-20-1985/

Well unfortunately the Broadcom SoC used in this is only available to official Broadcom partners. So no, the typical person who wants to do this CAN'T acquire the parts.