entertainment software altogether and rebranded as VisiCorp in 1982 to align with its VisiCalc spreadsheet software. Rather than find another publisher, Infocom decided to self-publish its games and began renting office space and contracting with production facilities. It bought out Personal Software's stock of AppleII ZorkI copies and began publishing ZorkI and II directly by the end of 1981. ZorkIII followed in the fall of 1982. Infocom developed interpreters for the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family of computers, CP/M systems, and the IBM Personal Computer, and released the episodes of Zork for them as well in 1982. Reception Sales Following its 1980 release, ZorkI became a bestseller from 1983 through 1985, with 380,000 copies sold by 1986. In its first nine months Personal Software sold 7,500 copies for the TRS-80 and AppleII. Sales ballooned as Infocom began self-publishing the trilogy and the personal computer market expanded. ZorkI had sold 38,000 copies by the end of 1982, nearly 100,000 in 1983, and around 150,000 copies in 1984. Its success outpaced Infocom's later games; Inc. reported in 1983 that ZorkI, only one of Infocom's fifteen released titles, composed twenty percent of their annual sales. ZorkI sales declined beginning in 1985. The second and third parts of Zork also sold well, though not as highly as the first: more than 170,000 ZorkII and 130,000 ZorkIII copies sold by 1986. Overall sales of the first three episodes reached over 760,000 copies by early 1989. Combined, they sold more than 250,000 copies by 1984, and more than 680,000 copies through 1986, including the 1986 Zork Trilogy compilation release. Between 1982 and 1986, the Zork trilogy composed more than one-third of Infocom's two million total game sales. Activision purchased Infocom in 1986 and reported that the three Zork games and trilogy compilation sold another 80,000 copies by early 1989. Reviews The episodes of Zork were highly praised in contemporaneous reviews. Byte and 80 Micro praised their writing, which the Byte reviewer described as "entertaining, eloquent, witty, and precise". Reviewers for Softalk and The Space Gamer enjoyed how the parser let them input more complex sentences than did earlier games, the Softalk review noting that every other game since Adventure had limited the player to two-word phrases, though they also thought players would largely stick with clearer two-word commands. 80 Micro wondered whether Zork could ever be completed because of how much the parser let the