If it helps, before I had this issue, the game was reporting DirectX errors (see attached log for example), no matter the resolution or graphics settings, accompanied by the infamous black screen. Figuring the game's D3D8.dll file was a wrapper (whether this is true or not, I've no idea) replaced it with, first D3D8to9, then the latest beta version of dgVoodoo2 (which, despite the name, wraps D3D1-8.1). No matter which wrapper I used, it resulted in the issue I reported originally.
d3derr.log