C was a bloated language for targeting the Gameboy[0].

Only slowly after the 32bit became mainstream, did professional game developers started adopting C.

In the 8 and 16 bit days, C (and Pascal dialects) were viewed as C# and Java are nowadays for game development.

[0]Using my 80's developer hat.

That's a "recent" development though :) The original title back in the day were all written in assembly, you really have to squeeze out every single byte and cycle for something like Pokemon or Kirby.