HX DOS-Extender
http://www.japheth.de/HX.html

HX DOS-Extender is a free DOS extender with built-in PE file format support (like Borland's PowerPack, WDOSX or Phar Lab TNT). B […]
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HX DOS-Extender is a free DOS extender with built-in PE file format support (like Borland's PowerPack, WDOSX or Phar Lab TNT). Because of this feature, HX supports many development environments, for example:

* MS Visual C++, including the free version of MS Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
* Digital Mars C++
* Open Watcom C++
* Borland C++, including the free version of C++ Builder Command Line Tools
* MinGW (GCC, GNU C++ compiler)
* Pelles C
* LCC-Win32 (C compiler)
* Borland Delphi
* Free Pascal (Win32)
* Pascal Pro
* FreeBasic (Win32)
* PowerBasic
* MicroFocus Object Cobol
* MASM, TASM, FASM, LZASM, WASM, NASM, ...

Besides that, HX contains a Win32 API Emulation which allows many Win32 console applications to run in DOS. So most of the compilers/assemblers just mentioned may run with HX in plain DOS as well.

What caught my eye tho was this:

As a new feature, HX supports development of dual-mode 2D-graphics apps. In fact, these are true DirectDraw Win32 binaries and will run as such in Win32. In DOS, however, they will run as DPMI clients and a DirectDraw emulation dll (DDDRAW.DLL) will be loaded. The emulation requires a VESA 2.0 BIOS to work. The DirectDraw emulation is limited, though, and will most likely not allow to run third-party DirectDraw apps. But it may be a way to overcome the non-existance of VESA support in Windows NT/2K/XP. Since all of this is mainly useful for self-written apps only, it is contained in the developer support package.

heh. Wonder if DosBox will work with it. 😁