1.3 had a bug where it treated any image as having the mouseover effect generation unless it was named with _x1.png as part of the name.
1.3.0.1 fixed this so I suspect the issue is the name of your file as if it were right you would have not had the effect on 1.3. Try naming it "MyButton_x1.png". Also we have an editor that's downloadable from this forum which will name things correctly for you.
Regarding that theme, on Windows 8 Start8 used the Start menu parts in the OS theme which Microsoft had left. On Windows 8.1 these parts were removed so the theme does not exist anymore. But in 1.3 we added the ability for Start8 to have custom themes and we have included two with Start8. These are not the same as the OS one (copyright concerns may prevent that), but one is fairly similar and third parties can make themes and may well make one eventually that's exactly like Windows 7.