The theme is Russian or Soviet and I think maybe you might change into some kind of animal. At first I was thinking Altered Beast but I just played it and it's not the right game. In this game I remember a lot of storms and lightning and I think one of the attacks kind of caused you to shoot forward and destroy your enemies. Does this sound like anything? Would have been from the mid to late 80's, I think.

Strider? but i dont remember changing into an animal.

Not sure, can you give any more details? You can always start searching.
http://www.klov.com/index.html

I think it was Strider. Don't know where I got the animal transformation thing.

Cool website, Goblincat.

Strider? Wow, when you were saying Russian I was thinking more along the lines of Rush N Attack?

That's definitely the game I was thinking of.

Thanks again, guys.

DaveNinja, I don't know how you got that. Strider is one of my old favorites. Just yesterday I was wondering if there will be an update. But I wasn't thinking of that game at all with the transformation thing. Good call, Man.

Now if Alvis has said something about grabbing onto the ceiling and using a sword I might have got it.

Damn, I want to play that game again.

How many times must we say it. Get MAME!

Silly, I know about MAME. I don't even need it because I still have my SEGA. But they won't let me play it at work.

The first game that I thought of was Karnov, but there definately was no animal transformations!

Can anyone recommend a good controller I can use on my with my computer to play most Mame games? I'm tired of the keyboard.

I had the genesis strider and got really good at it, and years later saw the arcade version and figured it would be a lot harder, but it wasnt and i have to leave the game because i was playing too long.

The russian thing made me think of Strider, that the sliding across the screen cutting guys.

daveninja.com

Outside of using a MAME cabinet, I find the Microsoft gamepad to be the best.

That is exactly what I was thinking when I first read his description but you are right about the lack of animal transformations. But I did like playing Karnov, it was fun.