With the 1040 STfm coming a little later, even a 1040 could be connected to a TV, a very popular game machine. Mega ST 1,2 and 4 The Mega ST series was intended for serious applications and people who need their computers mainly for office applications. The Mega ST 2 and 4 offered 2 or 4 MB, a Blitter, a cooling unit, an internal expansion bus, the Mega Bus, which was meant for speeders, memory expansions and graphic-cards, and an external, excellent keyboard. The Mega ST 1 came later as the 1040 was taken out of production. It had 1 MB, but no cooling unit.
People tend to forget that.
With the Commodore Amiga as the main competitor, Atari had to do something about the medium graphic and the really lousy sound capabilities of the Atari ST series for a rather low price. It offered 4096 instead of 512 colours, but could display still only 16 at a time. It had hardware scrolling and a blitter, unfortunately, no hardware-sprites. 2 cinch line out plugs connected the speakers. However, as a low cost solution for games, the Atari 1040 STE totally flopped.