Text-based game using JavaScript and/or PHP

I'd like to make a simple text-based game using either JavaScript or PHP. Ideally I'd like to be able to render ASCII text in a kind of blackscreen "console" style (think console roguelikes such as Crawl or Nethack, or old Infocom text adventure games). The game would be simple, mostly text entry and menu choices.

Is this easily done using JS or PHP; if so, could you give me some pointers, and if not, what could I use to have this kind of game running from a browser rather than an executeable?

On top of bummzack's answer, which is pretty well fleshed out, I would give you one bit of advice.

Before you get into animating, make sure your PHP is solid. One good way of testing is to have several buttons on the page for your various actions, and use them with a simple POST call.

If you can nail down your game processing logic, then animating it should be a simple step forward. But, debugging AJAX requests can certainly be a headache if you're not careful.