mrcrispy83: Normally to start a game you would have to press a number key for a town (in this case 1 for the starting town) to go to its inn, add party members with ctrl+corresponding letter, then press 'X' to exit the inn and start the game.

But you can't get to that point?

dkzul: Copy the file ROSTER.DTA from ./__support/save/ROSTER.DTA (or __support\save\ROSTER.DTA if you use Windows) to the main folder.

I had the same problem and I found out the solution compiling DOSBOX with debug mode enabled and checking thelog. I have yet to play the game so I don't know if other errors would occur, therefore I recommend you to compile a copy of DOSBOX with debug options for yourself.

In a quick tutorial

* download the DOSBOX source code (on sourseforge). You can use subversion to download a copy of the sources or go on the SVN tab in the DOSBOX project page and download a snapshot.
* you can follow the instructions contained in the sources under the README and INSTALL files.
* Once compiled you can start Might and Magic 1 by powershell, or by bash if you use Linux with the command
$ path/for/the/source/dosbox MM.EXE

The debug informations will replace the console and the actual game would be on a separate window.

vladimir1986: So, I decided to start with the series, and went for MM1. And I found a big problem... When I start the game, it asks me to press "Esc", then a screen that when ready, I should press "Enter"... And that is it. Pressing enter, reloads that same screen, and no other keys work, so I am stuck without being even able to start the game...
Just in case it was a quirk with DosBox, I went into the trouble of creating a PC XT VM, installing Dos 3,2 on it, creating two 360kb floppy disk images, transferring the game into them and then into tho XT hard disk, selecting the proper graphic set (tried both CGA and EGA)... And not, same problem. I can´t go pass the "Are you ready? then press enter" screen.