Transformation failure in all versions (win8)

While playing the windows 8 release for NTSD 2.4, I was playing as Naruto, I tried to transform into the one-tailed Kyuubi form by pressing the block button while hitting an enemy with the Rasengan and I started to transform. Naruto followed all the sprites of the transformation up until the point where he should turn into the one-tailed Kyuubi Naruto player. This is where I first noticed the problem, for some reason, Naruto showed all sprites of turning into Kyuubi Naruto, yet he didn't transform at all. When he finished the sprite sequence he simply turned back into himself.

I started looking through some other characters, and they all had the same issue. (e.g. Hidan's circle appears, but he doesn't transform, Kakuzu doesn't really do anything, Sasori's armor pieces fall on the ground but he doesn't actually turn into non-armored Sasori, etc.)

The same issue arose while playing the Extreme edition, and the Lightning edition doesn't work at all in Windows 8. (it just gives loading errors over and over until the program just crashes)

Can anyone please help?

Additional information:
OS: Windows 8
Graphics card: nVidia Geforce 610M (2 GB)
CPU: Intel core i5 3210M (2.5 GHz)
RAM: 4 GB
If you need any other information I'll be happy to supply it, as long as it's actually relevant.

I'm in the same boat..
used to play 2.4 with my brother a lot.