Also towered A1200 systems are known to be hacky and unstable.
But seriously.. for classc games I would recommend an A600.
It will run practically any classic game.
I think 95% compatibility with old A500 games is a bit optimistic, just the other day I took my A1200 to a friends and a lot of the games he has (he has a dodgy A500 - I'm getting a 600 for him soon) do not run properly.
I think A600. It will run a large majority of the games and comes in a nice Amiga style case, but smaller.
A600's are typically cheaper than A1200s and Ax000 machines as well, and don't yelllow and are known not to break as easily.
I have had an A1200 since 2000, and trust me, theyre not as rosy for classic games as people make out.
A1200's to me, are a cheap route for an upgradable classic Amiga.
It was for this reason that 2 or 3 weeks ago I iinvested in an A600 off Amibench.
It arrived last Tuesday (3rd February) and I got all my old A500 games out of the loft and could enjoy playing them again - there was a good 200 disks worth of games which would simply refuse to run on the A1200, whatever patches or things I did to the A1200 which sometimes works.
It's a bit wierd, but I think if you invested in an A600 you would have a good little classic games machine.
But drawbacks include the fact that it isnt as easy to switch from PAL AND NTSC and you will need some extra hardware to get it to work on your PC monitor (same story with the A500 a few people have suggested you should get)
But I think the A600 is the most compatible Amiga regardless of what people say about the A500.
For A500 games (the small amount which will not work on the A600 - and I mean VERY SNMALL) then you can get a copy of Relokick or similar software which lets your A600 boot the Workbench 1.3 prompt to trick it into acting as an A500 style Amiga.
A600's you can also get an Apollo 630 to run slightly more demanding games, a Squirrel SCSI Interface and CD-ROM drive, extra RAM etc if you really want to, without losing compatibility to the old games thanks to the ECS chipset, which is a sort of middle chip in Amiga.
You get more out of Original Chipset games yet don't lose the compatibility you would have if you were running AGA.
A600! :-)