DirectX was the second attempt, during Windows 3.x days a first attempt to bring game devs away from MS-DOS into Windows was made with WinG, an API that is almost impossible to search for nowadays, unless one knows where to look for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG
https://archive.org/details/WING10
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/a-whirlwind-tour-o...
Vulkan is not available on the PlayStation, and the support on the Switch is mainly for porting purposes, the main API is NVN.
Amiga's Agnus and AGA were baby GPUs already with programmable steps, even if rather basic.
On the arcades there was TMS34010 as one of the first programmable chips for graphics.