I GOT IT TO WORK! Turns out the crash dump was a pretty good hint to what going on. The problem?

I didn't have DirectPlay installed.

Now for those paying attention you may have noted I have installed DirectX in various forms about a kajillion times. So then, what happened? Well, DirectPlay is a install-on-demand "legacy component" in Windows 8:
[url=http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn323745(v=vs.85).aspx]http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn323745(v=vs.85).aspx[/url]

I tested it on a friend's computer, and his got a pop-up to install DirectPlay. Why didn't mine?

My computer had the Diagnostic Policy Service, Diagnostic Service Host, and Diagnostic System Host services disabled.

Countless hours of debugging later and it's due to some legacy windows hook in a service that states it does "diagnostics". Sigh.

Anyway, runs great. Nice game too. Problem solved - thanks to everyone who helped!

EDIT: Setting the 3 services to manual and manually starting the Diagnostic Policy Service was enough

Thank You a lot MetalPlateMage.
I was exactly with this same problem on Windows 10 and activating DirectPlay solve everything.
Thank You a lot...