There is one CRT that has existed since Win95 and is still there in Win10, it's called MSVCRT.DLL and getting versions of MSVC other than 6 to link to it is possible and has been done (although not trivial). MS rather strongly discourages this, but as evidenced by all the apps out there that do it and continue to work, it's pretty much the only way to get a single small dynamically-linked binary that'll run on every 32-bit version of Windows ever released.

In contrast the "universal" CRT is not very universal at all, and a horrible bloated mess. But certainly not unusual of MS...