I remember the alt fire for the flare gun sending out flares in a star. Now it's just one shot, like the regular, but it explodes in a fireball? What happened? Is it a graphic problem? Just something in a patch? I'm confused.

The star pattern was part of the pre-release shareware IIRC, It was changed in later versions to a cross. If you are just getting a fireball, you are probably just to close to a wall for it to fan out. Fire it against a distant wall and see what happens.