I find it kind of odd that people in this thread are saying the A1200 was too expensive compared to the Sega MD (or Genesis for us USA people). The Genesis had more or less the same specs as an Atari ST.
No. The MD has much less RAM and a slightly slower main CPU. It also has a pretty advanced graphics chip compared to the Atari ST. They are entirely different beasts.
I think it even had very similar sound chips (though more like the STe's sound than the original ST.)
No. The MD had two sound chips, none of which are particularly similar to that of the Atari ST (YM2149). The first was a four operator FM chip of six channels (YM2612) and the second was a simple PSG that wasn't as advanced as that of the ST (less frequency resolution and range I believe). The MD also had a secondary Z80 CPU for sound and backwards compatibility with the Master System.
The SNES was released only a year before the A1200, and really for general use, the A1200 has better graphics capabilities, it's only for specific game use that the SNES is a bit better at things.
"For general use" is the key phrase here. The SNES was designed to be a cheap game machine, and as such it didn't have a lot of RAM (game data is instead in mapped ROM, and graphics is usually managed on a per-tile/per-sprite basis), so unlike on Amiga, linear bitmap graphics were unviable. It was never meant for "general use", but the point is that it excelled at what it did, at a lower price, earlier than the A1200, with a much slower CPU and much less RAM. Platform games, shooters, RPGs etc. still most look, play and sound better on the SNES in my opinion.