So, I fell in love with GOG a year ago when I found out about it, and bought several games I'd wanted to play when I was a kid, but couldn't. I played the first few minutes of several of them, and rejoiced! Alas, I was buried under a mountain of schoolwork all of last year, but my life is slowly coming together. I'd looked forward to playing these games in the now-ish time.

However, in the interim, I got a new computer that runs on Windows 8. It doesn't seem to run any of the games I wanted to play... Haegemonia, Star Wolves, and Outcast are all a no-go... and I'm wondering if there's any point in buying games on this site any more. At least, for games that came out prior to Win 8. GOG seems to say that it supports Win 8 for these games, which makes me all the more dubious.

Does anyone have any suggestions, in specific or in general? I'd love to use this site more.

You could remove the garbage that is Windows 8 from your machine and install Windows 7.

I don't have Win8 myself, but anything that runs on Win7 should run on 8. Have you gone to the specific game forums and seen what tricks are to getting those games working on the newer OS.
Try installing the games to C:\Games\Whateveryourgameis
Also try running the executable (install file) by right clicking it and running as administrator.

I also recommend installing Windows 7 but before you do that try these as I've read they can help:

Always either or both install or play with admin rights
Install the games in a different folder than program files/x86
Disable visual themes and dekstop composition in compatibility in properties

I always use these when I play older games as a protocol just to avoid issues that can happen without them.

No. No.

There's no reason to install the inferior system. Now, try to share with us why does it not work, I have win 8 too and all the games from GOG I have tried worked perfectly. I'm going to try out Outcast and report back with results.

Is it true that Windows 8 doesn't have a Start Menu button?

This ^ ^ +1 (bit slow, what Fenixp said)

"Inferior" ?! What the? Are you serious? Why is it inferior? It's still Windows 7 under the hood with the phone interface stitched on. "Oh but it boots faster". Yeah, that was a problem when machines took 3 minutes to boot, not today, sorry. Turn hibernate off and you'll two things: 1) machine will boot a bit slower and 2) a chunk of drive space will be freed up. It's usually as big as the amount of RAM the machine has. Happens with both Win7 and Win8

He probably can't install Windows 7 for at least two reasons:

1) the windows license is an OEM one. Those do not come with the downgrade option
2) manufacturer may not provide drivers for Windows 7 and trying to use the Win8 ones may cause trouble because every time they release a new version of Windows, MS "tweaks" some things.

@MrZorg Just tell us more details. We might be able to help. Did you look at the support articles? While there are not any Windows 8 specific topics, you still could be able to find articles that apply to a specific behaviour that you're noticing

All right, Outcast - doesn't work right out of the box. When the game starts, go to settings -> performance options -> press the down arrow on the left side of launcher -> increase resolution to 512 x 384. Works perfectly now.

It might be worth trying hi-res patch for that matter.

Sadly, I have neither Haegemonia nor Star Wolves from GOG to try out :-/ Brilliant. Won't go into that discussion now, OP asked about Win 8, people suggested installing Win 7, which is about the most useless reponse they could have come up with.

There will always be one game that will not work at first with the new OS, but here is where it gets hilarious...

That one game, is the only game you want to play at that exact time, so you can only curse everything and everyone around until it gets fixed or curse the new OS aswell and head back to the earlier one.

That's just life right there, happens in games, in life's trivialities and what-not.

Cheers.

'obviating'?

You must be a bad mutha fucka when it comes to Scrabble! :D

I was an English major and I had to look that one up.

You're alive, I thought Lake Superior drank you and your house. :)

Unfortunately I can't be of much help, i only have Outcast out of those three and it works fine on my win8. There definitely seems to be some issue though since there's a couple of threads about it in the outcast subforum.

I have a little virus I didn't get eaten my sharks.:P That being said I'm going back to sleep.

Hehe, off you go then, I'm on the same train though, catch ya later cthulhish friend. :)