well, MESS is based on HazeMD since ~2010.
a few pirate games are missing an ID routine, so you need to use the xml software list to play them (i.e. rename the archive with the shortname expected by MESS, like you would with MAME, and put it inside the roms/ folder), but if you find anything which was working in HazeMD and is not working now in MESS, please report it because it's a bug and I'd happily try to fix it