...but the Spectrum is very poorly remembered today.
Say what?!? The Spectrum is positively legendary as a pivotal piece of 80s era computing. Clearly, you are coming at this with a non-British eye. However, in the UK the Spectrum was number one in its time and instrumental in creating a generation of British coders and games developers - indeed, it is no stretch to say that Britain's prominence today in IT and software engineering is due in no small way to those kids with Spectrums in their bedrooms who grew up on Sinclair BASIC and Jet Set Willy. The Speccy is still remembered fondly by virtually every person I know of my generation (40-somethings) and most of my colleagues who are in IT of a similar age to me had one as a child. Saying that it's "poorly remembered" is ludicrous. I'm sure there'll be people from the ex-Soviet countries and elsewhere in Europe who will similarly wax lyrical about the Spectrum clones they grew up with. There is still an active demo scene, there are successor machines (the Spectrum Next is imminent - although the less said about the Vega+ the better) - the Speccy lives on. "Poorly remembered" indeed - harrumph.
More on topic, I think the only way to see Sinclair ascendant is to get rid of Sir "Uncle" Clive himself at a point early in the Spectrum's lifetime. The Spectrum was the Sinclair success story, but Uncle Clive's fascination with idiocies like the C5 drove the company into the ground. If Clive departs the scene earlier, eg during the ZX81 days, I don't think the brand would have captured enough of the British imagination by then.
I think to be the British Atari one doesn't necessarily need to think in terms of games consoles - and maybe the British Nintendo or Sega might be a better comparison.
I think we start with a POD in 1981 where Acorn do not get the BBC Micro gig. Maybe they fail to get their demo machine up and running at the 11th hour to showcase to BBC representatives as OTL. Without this, Acorn struggle and eventually fold in early 1983. (As an aside, we have just butterflied away ARM, which has some interesting implications for future mobile devices - but that's another story).
A second POD has Uncle Clive himself meet with an unfortunate accident also in early 83. This leaves the keys to the kingdom with Nigel Searle who was a savvy business operator, but no visionary. But perhaps a visionary wasn't what was needed given the momentum the Spectrum and Sinclair brand had. Sinclair as a company failed because of Uncle Clive's preoccupation with things like the C5 and breaking into the business computing market.
Seale brings Chris Curry back into the fold to oversee tech. Under this duo Sinclair as a company doubles down on the Spectrum and the burgeoning games market. Instead of resenting the fact that the Spectrum was perceived as an inexpensive games machine, Searle's Sinclair Research owns it. The QL never sees the light of day.
In 1984 Sinclair releases the Spectrum Ascendant - a low cost games machine with a membrane keyboard, joystick ports and integrated Microdrives. In hardware terms, this is OTL's Spectrum 128 - except the expense that otherwise would have gone on the keyboard diverted to the storage medium. With the focus now firmly on gaming, the machine is pitched as a console with the heart of a computer.
The Ascendant is able to draw upon a huge range of existing 48K games that can simply be transferred to Microdrives. In short order, software companies start to draw upon the "fast" (compared to cassette tape) storage and improved sound to create more advanced games.
In early 1985 Sinclair release the Loki and Loki Plus. Both models build on the Ascendant but increase the RAM to 256K and introduced a new screen mode that maintained the Spectrum's 256x192 resolution but added 8x1 colour attribute blocks, hardware scrolling and sprites. This greatly minimised the Spectrum's traditional graphical achilles heel of colour clash and made for much richer visuals in games. The feel is of 16 bit visuals at 8 bit prices. While this year sees the release of the Atari ST and Amiga, which sell well in niche contexts e.g. music and SFX, the gaming market finds it hard to move past the price point of the Loki and in Europe Sinclair reign supreme.
The Loki was the first machine to truly break into the American market. The original ZX81 and Spectrum had had limited penetration in the States through a deal with Timex, but following the Video Game Crash the time was right stateside for an inexpensive machine that could straddle console and computer. The vast library of games developed throughout the Spectrum's lifetime also helped make for a compelling offering.
(OK - so this is less "British Atari" more "British Nintendo or Sega"!)
Not sure where to go from here though and I'm out of time.. I'll just leave this here for now
