So.... I'm in the menu screen. I try to hit the down arrow on the keyboard to select "State New Game" or whatever. The little purple indicator won't move. Pressing enter does nothing. Pressing spacebar does nothing. So I roll over the various keys on my keyboard, trying to get a response.... Black screen comes and says "Party is not formed!" And it reloads the "intro".

Old games are hard. What am I doing wrong? (The "manual" is just backstory and basic RPG information, in an rpging form.)

Nevermind.... you press "I" for Initiate Game.

I had a DOS fail...

Well, you can take solace in the fact that you're not the only one. :)

It's interesting how changes in UI since then have led to very different expectations when we encounter, for example, a menu screen.