You been needin some new particle fx in your games. I seeked and found.
I downed "haafs-game-engine or HGE" a long time ago. In it, is a particle effect tool. It is small and good, and also see, its font editor. I can use a screen recorder, to rip any of the fx in any of those below:
http://www.indiedb.com/engines/haafs-game-engine/downloads - other things may interest you on this gamers page
I Gooogles "images: particle effects free windows program download" which gives plenty of what you need
Some are pay for, so be reading everything??
You can even find ready made free animations of explosions, lightning etc...
Use a screen recorder?? I tried Wink and you can set fraps at say 30 per second on timed save.
Then export that series of frames as HTML and it puts all the frames in an image subfolder. Handy?
I can share with you that I was very impressed at the results you can get in "Particle Illusions", or "Adobe After Effects", which are trial versions. I mean; C'mon !!! You gets what you pay for.
Also; consider using a free 3d animator studio like Blender, if your head can hold it. That can create a 3d cloud or fire, which you can swirl in 3d. Record that ani, and batch save the frames as I did before. Eh? Eh?
Good hunting, themightymekon
To save time when visually scanning these results [3 pages of them in sourceforge alone]. You can ignore words like optimization, language, system, library, as those are likely to need advanced programming skills. What remains will contain a few which provide a GUI player which you can play with and snap some effect from. 