Launched by Commodore in 1992, the Amiga 1200 was an attempt to update the home Amiga line after the success of the A500, keeping the compact keyboard-computer format while introducing more modern hardware. It reached mainly the European market, including Italy, while its presence in North America remained more limited. By then, however, the landscape had changed: PC compatibles were growing rapidly, the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo dominated home gaming, and Commodore was entering an increasingly fragile phase.

The machine used a Motorola 68EC020 at 14 MHz, with 2 MB of Chip RAM and an 880 KB 3.5-inch floppy drive, as well as the option to install an internal 2.5-inch hard drive. The AGA chipset expanded the graphical capabilities of the earlier OCS/ECS Amigas, offering a 16.8-million-colour palette, 256 colours on screen in standard modes, and HAM8. Audio was still handled by Paula, with four stereo PCM channels: still distinctive, but less astonishing compared with the emerging multimedia systems of the time.

Sales are generally estimated at a few hundred thousand units, far below the numbers achieved by the Amiga 500. Even so, it remains a much-loved machine for its expandability and creative scene, associated with games such as Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Banshee, Super Stardust, Worms, The Chaos Engine, Slam Tilt, Brian the Lion and Simon the Sorcerer.