The major breakthrough here is a method for interfacing brain like organic tissue (that they had already developed) with electronic components. They’re using the brain tissue in a similar fashion as a neural network based AI and training it to relay signals to electronic components in response to certain stimuli, if I understood the article correctly; I skimmed quite a bit though.
It is a menu driven battler that ran on a game boy. It doesn’t take a programming savant to write this, no matter how many mechanics you bolt on top.