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I also remember by videogame magazines I was reading back in early 90s that another C++ compiler that was a favourite among devs was Watcom C++ that was released in 88.

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That doesn't mean that it was used primarily with C++ though. IIRC Watcom C/C++ mainly became popular because of Doom, and that was written in C (as all id games until Doom 3 in 2004 - again IIRC though).

The actual killer feature of Watcom C/C++ was not the C or C++ compiler, but its integration with DOS4GW.

Btw, dont’t remember Turbo C or Borland C++ to be able to compile to 32-bit x86 on DOS

Borland C++, Microsoft C/C++, and GCC (DJGPP[1]) could all target 32-bit extended DOS, but Watcom was the first[2] to bundle a royalty-free DOS extender[3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39038095

[2] https://www.os2museum.com/wp/watcom-win386/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_extender

OMG, the name "Watcom" just opened a flood of nineties memories of the demo scene for me. Thanks for mentioning.

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