I have tried playing games that had few graphics problems in windows 7 and Vista (Age Of Empires I and II to be exact) and noticed that unlike windows 7 and vista windows 8 manages to make the games look the way they were meant to be without the need to end explorer or do any other patches and I was wondering, have anyone tried to play some of the older games on windows 8? Maybe, just maybe the OS has been improved to run older games/applications better?
I've got two PC simulations that I use regularly: IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 and Sonalysts Dangerous Waters. Both were designed originally for Windows XP and work just fine in Windows 7 x64 (however, it's best to move them to a separate folder other than C:\Program Files). In Windows 8 x64 Professional (and Enterprise) IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 seems to be compatible. A quick check of frame rates reveals equal to or better than Windows 7. On the other hand, Sonalysts Dangerous Waters crashes to the desktop in any compatibility mode. Not sure if this is due to a graphics driver issue or Windows 8 in general. Since I've read that Windows 8 offers no performance gains, along with my having immediately installed a Windows 7 Start Menu that bypasses the Metro UI start screen, I see no reason to upgrade just yet.
Maybe your problem is related to DirectX?! Try to install DirectX 9 which will work together with DirectX10 and later. I use that for FS-X and X-Plane 9.
First of all,I'd like to compliment you on your choice of games . As for old games, some are a bit iffy, but generally I've found the same level of support of older titles as in windows 7,though some games act somewhat stabler and faster As for Dangerous waters, FWIW it should work properly for you with the latest patch from Sonalysts ( I've got Fleet Command running properly in Win8 x64 working doing so as the version I had was force closing on startup)