Just to add some extra information to the above, the GOG release of Miasamata runs without issue on native Windows 8.
In a Windows 8 virtual guest it lasts a little longer than XP - gets to the opening frame (literally) then crashes with no visible crash report other than an 'Unexpected error caused Windows to close' message. This crash saved quite a lot of information but I could not find the location. I assume that this is a report for Microsoft.
All tests were conducted in full 'experimental release' mode.
I tried increasing memory to 2GB in XP - no difference in the crash, and also increased the number of cores to two again with no change in the crash location or severity.