I agree with spirantho, but unless you're prepared to lay down some serious scratch with the initial investment and upgrades and don't mind dealing with the hassle of getting software off the net and onto your Amiga, I wouldn't bother since it sounds like you're pretty comfortable emulating. OTOH:
A500's can be had pretty cheap, but good luck getting acceleration for it, more RAM than 1mb and getting disk images onto it unless you enjoy dealing with a null modem cable setup.
A600 has built in pcmcia and ide but only a 68k processor. Totally adequate though if all you're going to do is visit the occasional game. Machine has a nice small footprint too and is typically only a few bucks more than an A500 when you can find one.
A1200's go for a lot more money, but they are already accelerated (doesn't stop most from further investing in an 030 though), has a built in pcmcia port so you can transfer images easily with a cf card adapter and has an ide port built in as well.
