Turbo Pascal was taught at most UK college in the 80's I think most electronic engineers and CS guys who went to school around then were exposed to it and you would be surprised how many PC/DOS programs in the 80's were written in it.
Turbo Pascal seemed like the perfect language for writing DOS games in the early 90's. Fast, you didn't need to know low-level things but you could always patch in assembly routines if you needed to.
Not just the 80s, until at least 2000 and probably a lot longer