Another major addition to NBA 2K23 is the basketball league's "Era" mode, which allows players to start the game in three historical periods: 1983, 1991, and 2002. Players can change the history of the NBA on every level, shaping the league to their liking. Of course, this requires players to have strong enough players, and you can use MT NBA 2K23 to build and enhance players.

It's amazing to say, but the "Era" mode doesn't play much differently than previous basketball leagues, and after selecting the era and team, you can start as usual. It's easy to change the history in terms of team performance and composition, because the game, whether played manually or in simulation, will be different from reality, and the difference in performance will naturally affect the turnover afterward.

I picked the Houston Rockets in the 1983 opener, and since they were weak, I casually simulated them until the end of the season and still got the first pick, as history would have it. Since the AI's trade judgment is not very smart, I tried a few trade options and got the second or third pick while keeping Ralph Sampson, and the game was pretty much over.

The game mechanics have no way to simulate realistic draft decisions and player growth, so it's almost impossible to recreate the players who go low and fall through the cracks. All teams have the equivalent of an eye in the sky, and Michael Jordan, Akeem Olajuwon, and John Stockton have long been booked in the game for the top three picks in the draft, and no one will be able to compete with them. Players familiar with the "NBA 2K" series won't be here to ask where Charles Barkley went either; we all know the series doesn't have a license for him.

In contrast, the more interesting and valuable part of the "Era" mode is that the system will tell you at the end of each season what historical changes will happen in the off-season, including rule changes, team name changes, relocations, logo changes, and floor changes. You can decide to let these changes happen as usual, as they have historically done before you enter the next season.

This is the equivalent of giving players a handbook to the history of the NBA since 1983, you can learn when the rules that have shaped today's basketball were added, how today's 30-team East-West landscape was formed through changes, how the player salary cap and team spending has ballooned along the way ...... games indeed is the best way to look back at this history.

The "Era" mode also features special settings for the Jordan Challenge's periodized plays, rules, uniforms, broadcast effects, and graphics filters, and extends beyond the year 2000. It's not until the player advances to 2021 that everything becomes the same as the fast game.

As hard as the development team tries to make a return to the basketball experience of the past, there are still things that stick in there that tell you where the shortcomings lie. The most impossible to get around is player licensing, and if it were just the lack of Andrew Bynum and Ron Artest, it would be a modest shame at best in a mode so dominated by history. But the absence of Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, Chris Webber, Paul Gasol, and other big names who have a place in the championship race is a blow to the integrity of the model that is hard to ignore.

In simulated games, you also often see the usual high scores and high shot counts of modern basketball; it may be that there is a lack of data on past players, and there should be some randomly generated players on the free agent roster, but seeing a player with the last name Antetokounmpo is still very out of character.