When you start the game, you get the title screen and a flashing message telling you to "Press Start/Z Button". When you do that, you get a right-side vertical list of "New Game", "Continue", and "Options". You can use arrow keys to scroll through all three and each will highlight but, if you have not yet made a save, Continue will not activate. Only New Game and Options will activate. If you have made a save in-game, Continue will give you a list of games to load.
If you have created an in-game save but Continue will not activate, then check the "<game folder>/www/save" to see if it exists and if there are any "file<number>.rpgsave" files. If there aren't, then no in-game saves were made. When making a save, you must choose Save from the game menu, select the numbered slot to which you wish to save, and then click that slot or hit the 'z' key. You should then go back to the game menu.
The game must be in a folder without any security protections. So it can not be in a folder like "Program Files". Also, save files from earlier versions (especially from as far back as 1.4) are incompatible with v1.7. Start over fresh. The grinds are now much shorter and you can use the cheat object in your room to bypass many things.