ORB 0011984
THICK NALDO'S SENSIBLE GOLF
Eighteen holes of championship links golf, played entirely by typing. Contains trees, a lake and a marriage.
LOAD ""EFFORT: 6 SPADES£2.99
ORBIT LEISURE (HOLDINGS) LTD
P100
CLEETHORPES
ORBIT
LEISURE
LEISURE PRODUCTS FOR THE HOME COMPUTER · EST. 1983
Welcome to our information service. Select a page below, or key the number on the pad at the foot of the screen.
Unit 11, Marsh Lane Industrial Estate, Cleethorpes. Software Division. Also suppliers of pool tables, dartboards and coach excursions. All titles on cassette; please allow 28 days.
ENQUIRIES BY POST TO THE ABOVE, OR BY ELECTRONIC MAIL TO
oliverjwoods@gmail.com — which reaches the same desk, only quicker.
CATALOGUE
ORDERED BY CATALOGUE NUMBER · PRICES INCLUDE POSTAGE
ORB 0021984
JILSON WOCKEY'S SENSIBLE DARTS ADVENTURE
Best of five legs against Derek Minge, who has not forgiven you and will say so between throws.
LOAD ""EFFORT: 4 SPADES£2.99
ORB 0031985
TUPPENNY FALLS
An afternoon on the coin pusher. Change a note, feed the tub in, scoop the tray, feed that in too. The five pound note is taped.
LOAD ""EFFORT: 1 SPADE£1.99
ORB 0041985
BARRY FLENCH'S SENSIBLE SNOOKER
One frame. Twenty-two balls, each of which must be referred to by its full name.
TAPE ONLYEFFORT: 9 SPADES£2.99
ORB 0051985
SENSIBLE ANGLING
An afternoon on the riverbank in real time. Five baits, none of which matter. Catch all four fish and the river is yours again, later. A man arrives with a dog.
LOAD ""EFFORT: 2 SPADES£1.99
ORB 0061986
THE SENSIBLE DRIVING TEST
Forty minutes with an examiner who writes things down. Includes a three point turn requiring nine commands.
TAPE ONLYEFFORT: 8 SPADES£2.99
ORB 0071986
GROUNDSMAN
You paint the white lines. The match is at three. The wheel on the marker is loose and nobody else has noticed.
TAPE ONLYEFFORT: 5 SPADES£1.99
ORB 0081986
SENSIBLE SERVICES
You have eleven minutes at Watford Gap and a family who all want something different.
TAPE ONLYEFFORT: 6 SPADES£1.99
ORB 0091987
ORBIT VOLUME ONE
Four earlier titles on the one cassette. Side B is 001 and 002. Side A is a recording of side B.
COMPILATIONEFFORT: VARIES£4.99
ORB 0101987
CROWN GREEN BOWLS WITH ARTHUR PELT
The green is not flat. Arthur knows which way it runs and will tell you afterwards.
TAPE ONLYEFFORT: 7 SPADES£1.99
IN PREPARATION
SENSIBLE CARAVAN · THE PUB QUIZ · SHOVE HA'PENNY · NALDO II (BACK NINE ONLY) · A GAME ABOUT HEDGES
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE FOURTEEN · SEPTEMBER · FREE TO PURCHASERS
FROM THE OFFICE
TUPPENNY FALLS is out on the budget line at £1.99. It is the shortest thing we have done and one or two people here have asked whether it is a game at all. It is. You put the coins in and then there are no coins.
A good month. GROUNDSMAN went out on the 4th and has already sold into double figures, which is ahead of where SENSIBLE ANGLING was at the same stage. Thank you to everyone who wrote in about the marker wheel. It is meant to do that.
NALDO II has slipped again. We had said August. It will now be later than August. The back nine is written but the trees are not behaving and we would rather it was right.
— O. WOODS, for the founders
HIGH SCORES SENT IN
| D. TALBOT, HULL | NALDO −4 |
| MRS J. ARKWRIGHT | NALDO −2 |
| "THE COLONEL" | WOCKEY 5–0 |
| P. CHIVERS, AGE 11 | WOCKEY 5–1 |
| K. BRAMHALL | ANGLING, 1 FISH |
Send yours on a postcard, or by electronic mail to oliverjwoods@gmail.com. We print what arrives. We have no way of checking any of it.
REVIEWED THIS MONTH
MICRO WEEKLY gave THICK NALDO'S SENSIBLE GOLF 91% and a SENSIBLE CLASSIC flash, calling the lake on hole 12 the finest water yet committed to text. YOUR COMPUTER MONTHLY gave it 46% and asked what it was for.
HINTS AND TIPS
A SERVICE TO PURCHASERS
BY ELECTRONIC MAIL. Write to oliverjwoods@gmail.com. Brian does not have the electronic mail. Somebody else answers those.
FULL SOLUTIONS BY POST. Send a stamped addressed envelope marked with the title and the hole, leg or frame at which you are stuck. Please do not send the tape.
CLUE LINE: 0898 55 55 12. Calls cost 38p per minute. The line is a recording of Brian reading the solution slowly. He does not stop for you to write it down.
THIS MONTH'S FREE CLUES
NALDO, HOLE 3. The bunker is not the problem. The rake is the problem.
WOCKEY, LEG 4. Derek is on a double. There is nothing you can do about Derek. Attend to your own score.
ANGLING. Do not talk to the man. There is no version of talking to the man that ends well.
GROUNDSMAN. Check the wheel at the start. We have said this before.
TUPPENNY FALLS. There is no way to come out ahead. Several purchasers have written to ask what the trick is. There is no trick. The nearest thing to winning is typing LEAVE while you still have coins, and the program will not thank you for it.
YOUR LETTERS
WE READ ALL OF THEM
Write to the address on page 100, or to oliverjwoods@gmail.com. Letters may be shortened. Nothing is invented.
D. TALBOT, HULL
On hole 9 of NALDO I typed PUTT and was told the word was not recognised. I have been playing golf for thirty-one years and I can assure you that PUTT is a word.
— It is a word. It is not one of ours. Try HIT BALL GENTLY.
MRS J. ARKWRIGHT, STOCKPORT
My son has asked me to write to say that in SENSIBLE ANGLING nothing happens for four hours. He is eleven and I have told him that this is also true of angling.
— Your son is correct and so are you. Both are intended.
NAME WITHHELD, SWINDON
Idea for a game: you are the man who reads out the football results on a Saturday and you must get the intonation right or the coupon is wrong.
— We like this very much. We are not going to make it. Printed here so that it exists.
K. BRAMHALL, PRESTON
Is Derek Minge based on a real person.
— No.
KNOWN ISSUES
CURRENT AT TIME OF PRESSING
- ORB 001. The verb
PUTTis not recognised on hole 9. UseHIT BALL GENTLY. This is intentional. - ORB 002. Scoring a 26 is reported by Derek as "twenty six" in a tone we have been unable to soften.
- ORB 003. Shaking the machine twice ends the program. This is not a fault and we will not be changing it.
- ORB 004. Referring to the brown as "the brown" is insufficient. Its full name is required and is given in the leaflet, which was omitted from the first pressing.
- ORB 005. On some machines the six hours pass in four. We are aware. Affected purchasers may consider themselves fortunate.
- ORB 007. The wheel.
- ALL TITLES. Typing
XYZZYdoes nothing. We are told this is traditional. We have left it in as a courtesy and it still does nothing.
Faults not listed here may be reported to oliverjwoods@gmail.com. Please state the title, the catalogue number, and what you were typing at the time.
SEND US YOUR TAPE
WE ARE LOOKING FOR FINISHED PROGRAMS
We would rather have a finished tape than a good idea. Ideas are welcome and we print the best of them on page 500, but we cannot make them, and most of them go no further than the letters page.
If you have written something that would sit on our shelf, send it. We will play it. If it is right for the catalogue we will give it a number, put it on page 200 and put your name on page 800 as a programmer, which you will have earned properly rather than by post.
WHAT TO SEND
1. THE PROGRAM. One file that runs on its own. No outside parts, no fetching things from other computers, no signing in. If it will not run with the telephone line out, we cannot take it.
2. AN INLAY CARD. Title. One sentence of the sort we would print on the back. Three things the player would actually type. One line on how you lose.
3. THE NAME. What you want on the credits, and whether we may print your town.
Send it to oliverjwoods@gmail.com with A FINISHED TAPE at the top, or a link to where it can be fetched from.
HOUSE STANDARD
A title must be finishable in a quarter of an hour. It must keep a status line at the top of the screen. It must never acknowledge that it is a game, or that text adventures exist, or that any of this is funny. It must concern an activity that no reasonable person would attempt to render in prose. Opponents and celebrities must be invented. Swearing is permitted up to and including "bloody". It must work on a telephone, because most of our customers are on one.
WHAT WE TURN DOWN
Anything that winks at the reader. Parodies of this firm. Anything that needs forty minutes, or an account, or somebody else's computer to stay switched on. Characters belonging to other people. Anything cruel about a real person. Anything where the joke is the swearing.
TERMS, SUCH AS THEY ARE
Your program stays yours. We ask only to put it in the catalogue and keep it there, and we will take it down the day you ask us to. We do not pay. We set the price, which will be £1.99, because everything is.
We are two people and we play everything ourselves, so a reply may take a while. We may come back and ask for changes. This is not a rejection; it is how the ones on the shelf got there.
THE STAFF
UNIT 11, MARSH LANE INDUSTRIAL ESTATE
The firm was founded by OLIVER WOODS and MIKE DX, who between them write the programs, answer the post, and decide what goes on the shelf. Everyone else listed here does one thing.
| OLIVER WOODS | FOUNDER |
| MIKE DX | FOUNDER |
| B. HALLORAN | POOL TABLES, EXCURSIONS |
| BRIAN | CLUE LINE |
| D. TALBOT | PROGRAMMER* |
| NAME WITHHELD | PROGRAMMER* |
| MRS J. ARKWRIGHT | QUALITY |
* Credited for an accepted idea. Has not programmed anything and is under no obligation to.
ORIGINAL CONCEPT
The whole of it — the company, the catalogue and the notion that any of this ought to be typed — is the founders' idea, and they are credited on every inlay whether they worked on that title or not.
Copyright © 2026 Oliver Woods and Mike DX. All rights reserved.
Programs remain the property of their authors. Unauthorised copying, hiring or lending strictly prohibited.
The Software Division is the back half of the unit. Duplication is done there on four decks. If your tape has a hum on side two it is one of the early ones and we will replace it.
888
SUBTITLES
Subtitles are not available on this service.
Nothing here is spoken aloud. It is all already writing.
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