It took me awhile to get into PC gaming exactly because physical editions are so unreliable. Is there anything I can do, or do I have to buy this game again on GOG?

I have the gog version.Although I did have some fps and flickering problems which I managed to fix following this guide.Also I did have to use the widescreen fix because the game is old and does not support high resolutions.



This solution requires changes in the NVIDIA 3D application settings. To find these settings, right-click your desktop and open the NVIDIA Control Panel. In the Control Panel, go to Manage 3D settings, and open the Program Settings Tab. The game specific options should show themselves after searching for BGaE.exe. For BGaE.exe, try the following settings:

Antialiasing Mode = Override any application setting
Maximum pre-rendered frames = 1
Monitor Technology = Fixed Refresh (not available for everyone, G-Sync related)
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD bias = Clamp

Next, the following options have to be set in the SettingsApplication.exe located in your local game folder. Here, in the advanced settings, try the following settings:

disable 'Triple Buffering'
disable 'Fastflip'
leave rest enabled or at maximum

Thanks to ancalimon of the GoG forums and to Monkey Tommo for reporting this fix here.

Monkey Tommo ran the game on a GTX 1080 with an i7 3770k and Windows 10 x64.
This fix was also reported to work with a GTX970 and an AMD FX8350 with Windows 10 64x Pro.

Thank you so much for your help.