Audio and Canvas tags were added by Apple to Safari before HTML5 was a thing, and they work just fine in HTML4 documents. You can actually take the JavaScript code for Mario here and render the game in a Flash-based implementation of the canvas API or take it to mobile with Open GL ES via Ejecta or the like… and not use any HTML at all. So the game is created with JavaScript, and it happens to be using a couple of HTML elements that are now in the official HTML5 spec for rendering graphics and audio.
The only reason anybody bothers to mention HTML5 ever is for marketing/buzzword effect. And BECAUSE of the fact that it is a buzzword (made so by Google) now “HTML5” is also the shortest way to explain to somebody you made something with JavaScript instead of Flash.
So HTML5 is actually a new specification of HTML tags (and really doesn’t do much compared to what JavaScript and CSS3 do). But people don’t use “HTML5” to mean that. They use “HTML5” to mean CSS3 and/or JavaScript and/or some HTML5 tags, too. And sometimes an “HTML5” project doesn’t even use any HTML5 tags at all.
If you want to be angry about the term being used in a technically incorrect way, please blame Google. It is the fault of their marketing department.
To be fair though, people write games mostly in C and then call them “OpenGL” games. That’s a kind of similar situation.
P.S. I didn’t know it was ok to steal Nintendo sprites.
