I am curious about how Pico-8 translates to JS, what tech it uses, 2d canvas, or is it webgl? It's drawing fast and pixels (5*5?) are razor sharp (=no canvas scaleing) So I downloaded and may investigate :). Raycasters are fascinating, but this one lacks of player rotation and collision handling. The latter is easy in a raycaster that uses a 2-dimensional grid for cubes. See the ascii raycaster on my page.
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I haven't looked into the JS that pico-8 generates, I have no idea how it works. I haven't added collision because I want to focus on the graphics first. You mentioned lacking player rotation, I have left and right rotation controlled by z and x in the browser example. It's a little janky, but like I said, I'm just focusing on the graphics.
I've never done an ascii renderer before, that looked really cool. I played your more recent one too, and that was amazing. I might have to try it out for myself sometime.
It's originally a C/C++ application, ported to web with Emscripten.
but if you want pixel-scaling on a 2d canvas, one trick is to use this CSS
image-rendering: pixelated;
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Games/Techniques/Crisp_pixel_art_look