If you're interested in this, check out Fabien Sanglard's code review of Another World[1], which is one of the more notable VM based games, managing to target a multitude of different platforms with some impressive vector graphics for it's time.

Also very interesting is the Emscripten port of ioquake3, which includes a custom compiler for Quake 3 VMs to Javascript.

[1] http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/

[2] http://www.inolen.com/articles/compiling-quake-3-virtual-mac...