I've written a few games over the years using Javascript. Javascript allows your web browser to alter elements on the page after it's loaded. This is used for things like mouseovers, form validation and games! (I've recently also been writing some games using J2ME, which is Java for mobile phones; you can download some here!). The reason I started was just simple curiosity - I wanted to know if Javascript could be used to create a playable action game. My first two games, Pacman and Galaxian seemed to be pretty playable - even on the old Pentium 2 I had at the time, so it kind of went from there...

After I had a few games together I set up, the Javascript Games site, which I continue to run as a resource for games written in Javascript. Many of the games there are my own, but most have been written by other programmers; there's a help forum there, chatrooms and other things to help busy people waste time online! I also wrote the Gamelib library, which is an open-source API to help other people write games and animations without having to worry about browser issues and the like.

I group my games into 4 categories, these are also the categories used on the Javascript Games site, you can choose one from the widget over there on the right. Please note that due to the ever-changing nature of internet technology and standards, most games will only run on a subset of browsers. For instance, my original Pacman game was written before Mozilla or Netscape 6 had been heard of, so it will only run on Explorer or Netscape 4.

Actually, most games other authors put together will usually run on Internet Explorer as it is mostly backward compatible from v6 (currently) down to v4, many run on Netscape 4 as it was the first browser to offer floating layers, and a few are just starting to come through for Netscape 6 (but it's a very slow browser for games use).

Opera is an awful browser for Javascript, and there are few if any games that will work with it. Luckily it's an advert-bound browser with few users, so its not that big a problem. WebTV has a few though, I wrote Clix! and TetrisWebTV especially for that browser...