Windows 8 runs the 1999 game Age of Empires II better than Windows 7, which curiously messes up the screen graphics unless you terminate the Windows Explorer process – a fact that I noted in December 2010. Here is the game in Windows 7:
and in Windows 8, without fiddling with Explorer:
The fact that the game runs better in Windows 8 is probably due to some obscure bug-fix, though I like to think that somewhere in the development team is a fan of this old but excellent game (it is great multi-player) who decided to make it work.
Perhaps its due to dropping Aero in 8?