This was one of my first experiments using JavaScript for more than "regular" web development and it had been lying around for way too long until I put it online last year (at which it point it just went crazy on Digg and other sites, for whatever reason.)

The game aims to recreate the Super Mario gameplay and parts of the first level of the classic NES game using only JavaScript. This means that all the sprites are created at runtime with tiny divs or, if possible, drawn on sprite-sized canvas elements. The sprite data is included in the code as encoded strings. The (admittedly horrible) MIDI tune is stored as base64 encoded data and embedded as a data: URI. The embedded sprites were also discussed in detail by John Resig.

Check the original blog post for links to a smaller version as well as music enabled versions.

And if you're looking for a not-so-tech-demoish game of Mario, be sure to also check out the more complete Super Mario clone by Guillermo Bruchmann.

I'm no good with Japanese so I didn't get much out of the text on the page (what little there was) but the game is playable without it and the goal is the same as it has always been - collect gold and avoid/trap enemies.

Satoshi Ueyama has made a lot of cool stuff including some really neat canvas demos. This game, however, uses simple DOM manipulation and CSS sprites to create its nice old-schooley look.

The game is pretty simple and doesn't seem to have many features but the ones it has are done well and work smoothly. You jump around from platform to platform, operating levers and shooting enemies. Ammo and gold is placed around the levels, as are enemies that don't hesitate to shoot back.

The game was made with regular DHTML techniques although the sprite animations are small GIF animations. As with Peter Nederlof's other games, there is no sound.

The introduction blurb is in Dutch, but even if you have no idea what it says, that shouldn't stop you from being able to play the game (some of it is also available in English on the game list page).

There might be a few glitches here and there but all in all this is a very smooth game and it definitely has that Mario feel. It's also very complete in that all the features like mushrooms, flowers and so on seem to be implemented. At the time of this writing the two first levels are available, maybe more are coming? It certainly looks like the game is still being worked on as witnessed by the presence of a work-in-progress map editor.

The game seems to be using good old DHTML techniques to do all the graphics which seems to work quite well. A really cool feature is that you can resize the game screen by dragging the sides like you would any normal window. Neat.

Sound is missing, so not much to say there. Hopefully that will come some day.

It's refreshing to see an attempt at a real platform game done in JavaScript. This one seems a bit unfinished, though. While playing (in Firefox 3) there seemed to be quite a disagreement between where the character was walking and where the ground was, making it pretty much impossible to play. Shame. I've been told this issue has since been resolved, but I haven't confirmed it myself yet.

The graphics are ok, nothing mindblowing but also not the worst I've seen. They do have a certain homemade feel to them, though. Everything seems to be done with regular DHTML and div/image sprite techniques. Sound is provided via SoundManager2.

You can play the first couple of levels free of charge but if (for whatever reason) that's not enough, you can purchase a "lifetime subscription" that claims over 11,000 new levels. I don't know how much that's going to cost you, though, as it appears you need to sign up to see the price, which I did not bother with.