The problem using cheats is that the game doesn't save your progress. =(

Until some sort of patch comes out, I'll just pretend the crash is Duke punishing me for playing badly.

Same problem, Core 2 Duo. No way for me to "legally" get beyond the first stage, crashes whether I beat the boss or not.

I just bought this too.
Gog, I love you guys, but why would you have a broken game be part of a deal? Doesn't make much sense.

I just bought the game as well and am encountering this error. I have tried it with DirectX and OpenGL but both give me the error. I will use cheats to get past now but I hope that a patch or workaround will be forthcoming so I can play through legitimately. Thank you.

That's odd. I've got GOG version of this game and also classic retail version and both works just fine. Well, actually I managed to get past helicopter fight without dying at the first try...

Even though you pass the helicpter without dying, the game freezes. =(

What kind of hardware do you have? Is this not liking multiple CPU systems maybe? Or ATi drivers, or...something?

I've got multi-core system (Intel Core Quad Q6600) with NVIDIA GF8600GT (with actually pretty old drivers, 6 months I guess), Win Vista 64bit Bussines (Czech version)... And I definetly got a lot further than helicopter fight (without using any cheats or trainers).

I think all the people with issues (myself included) got AMD.

I have an Intel Celeron M and encountered the issue after the first boss fight and at later points in the game. I managed to finish the game by skipping maps via the console.

AMD here, actually enjoyed what I could play of Manhattan Project more than Duke 3D. Shame it's broken.
EDIT: Scratch me from the list, following the instructions on the 3DR site properly seems to have solved my issue.

Any luck?

Would you mind elaborating?

Initially I added the -nocpu flag to the gog shortcut, which isn't actually the Prism3D executable, but a wrapper for it.
Updating the shortcut to point directly to the Prism3D.exe, and adding the -nocpu flag has me up and running as I should be.