To answer my own question, now that I'm not on my mobile: it looks like there was an Alpha version of Visual C++ 2.0, as well as a cross-compiler for the 68k Macintosh! [1] I was firmly in VB land at the time (as a ~10 year old) so this bit of history eluded me.

[1] https://accu.org/index.php/journals/1771