Ah good old JavaScript. Not thought of too fondly by game developers, but, web developers sure like to put it to good use to recreate games within your browser. Case in point, Jacob Seidelin is a dedicated hacker who is putting his talent with JS to great use. How you ask? By hacking together a prototype version of Super Mario Kart in Javascript! Or, Super Mario Kart JS, if you will.

Complete with two courses (Mushroom Cup Round 1 and 2), opponents and soundtrack, SMKJS runs on FireFox 2 and 3, Opera 9.27+ and Safari 3.1.1+. IE users miss out, as they should for now upgrading to a real web browser. It uses the canvas element to do most of the rendering and the code (available here) weighs in at a nicely minimal 11 Kb.

At the moment, there is no lap count and the AI is a bit crude, but there is basic collision detection, which at least holds you back long enough to determine where you can cut corners.