I'm not sure that it is the same debate. Javascript doesn't compile down to any sort of bytecode. It is just a chunk of raw source. Anything of the technique

I'm not sure that it is the same debate. Javascript doesn't compile down to any sort of bytecode. It is just a chunk of raw source. Anything of the techniques that you'd apply (like JIT), would occur after a compile on the client. That seems like a pretty fundamental difference to me. And playing a 17 (!!) year old game doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing argument. You're effectively saying that javascript is some 2^(17/1.5) ~= 2000x slower than compiled C.