While some games aren't playable from start to finish, I would have to recommend trying out your game in MESS first before resorting to other emulators.
The core features and options at your disposal that are possible with MAME/MESS are simply too good to pass up even if a performance hit is taken or your game happens to hang at some point.
One example being I was able to finish Lunar Silver Star Story reasonably quickly because I could fast forward battles or slow parts of the game.