I want an Amiga gaming system!

[HopperJF]

Right actually ANSWERING his question:

Most powerful Amiga for games: Amiga 4000 PPC with Mediator and Voodoo 3 graphics and 256 meg RAM, nice big hard drive (go for whatever u want)

Oh, and of course.. a CD-ROM drive  :-)

[HopperJF]

AmigaOS 3.9 would make things even better, and a good monitor.

For some games you may want  a good joypad.
You can get Playstation joypads to work on your Amiga.
Go a google search for Amiga PSX Port.

Another thing you might want is good sound.
If you get an Amiga without a sound card you may well want to invest in one with some good speakers.
Make sure Amiga drivers are available (Amiga drivers are very scarce, even harder to find than Linux drivers not surprisingly of course - especially with newer cards)

I hope you get a nice gaming rig going!
Show us pictures and specs if you do!

[HopperJF]

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!  :-)

[HopperJF]

If you want a classic gaming amiga then yes definitely, as long as you dont mind the factors i stated in the above post.
if not, then go for the A3000 the other person suggested.

[HopperJF]

The A600 would be fine i think though
The A4000 isnt really compatible with the older games
Numerical keys? Big deal
HD? Old games dont even need one there

 :-)

[HopperJF]

Did I mention A600?  :-)

[HopperJF]

bloody hell a bet that took a while  :-)

[HopperJF]

I'm not sure how popular the Amiga was in Sweden
But here iin the UK a lot of secnd hand stores and local markets sell sometmes systems and old games (even if a lot of them are copies)

[HopperJF]

I don't think the Amiga ever really took off in the US.
Here in the UK, they were in use in professional art studios, video editing businesses etc and still are in some of the most unexpecting of places (MTV UK for example) and were still in youth  bedrooms as games machines until the late 90s.
Then of course there is a whole retro computing taking off in the UK at the moment, with new magazines being released for it, and ebay swarming with old computers and games for this new breed of retro gaming which is emerging

[HopperJF]

THe followlng I would recommend for games:

Amiga 500 1 Meg - although later games require Kickstart 2.0
Amiga 500 Plus - these have 1 meg AND Kickstart 2.0, which is very useful indeed, and is similar to the A600, but a lot biggger
Amiga 600 - 1 meg, and kickstart 2.0, like 500 PLUS but smaller, cooler and more modern looking.