BizHawk is a game console emulator that supports a large number of consoles from many different manufacturers – Atari, Sony, Apple, NEC, Nintendo, Sega, and more. It is open-source and can be run on Windows and after some work on Linux too. It can be easily compared with MAME because of such an extensive support for the gaming consoles from the past. It even supports running the ROMs from PlayStation and from Texas Instruments scientific calculators (only TI 83 series is supported).
Using BizHawk is very easy. Unlike some other emulators you do not have to put all the ROM files in any particular folder to begin with. You can keep your ROM files anywhere you want. After launching BizHawk (EmuHawk.exe), all you have to do is press Ctrl+O and then select a ROM file. This will instantly load the ROM and launch the game. You do not really have to make changes to any settings or choose any of the target consoles. BizHawk handles everything from here on. You can use your keyboard or a game controller to play the games.
If you end up some problems when launching BizHawk, then most probably it is linked to the Microsoft Visual Studio required files. For these occasions, BizHawk developers have put together a single installer that installs all the required files on your system. This installed can be downloaded from https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk-Prereqs. Basically, this installer will install all the Visual C++ DLL files on your system.
BizHawk comes with in-built game status saving functions. While in the middle of a game, you can choose to save the game state to a file. This will save the memory and other things to a file. You can find this function well hidden in the menu for BizHawk.
Even though BizHawk supports so many gaming consoles and TI calculators, it may not work with all the ROMs. But it is definitely worth a try if you are looking for a MAME alternative.
You can download BizHawk from https://github.com/TASVideos/BizHawk.