Sega Codemaster

There’s a certain kind of nostalgia that hums in the air around old arcade machines — the whirr of the fans, the dull thump of buttons, the phosphor glow of a screen just a little too close for comfort. This photograph leans into that, not by showing the player, but by staring straight down the throat of the beast itself.

The composition is blunt and unapologetic: the steering wheel dead-centre, its SEGA logo and stylised crest almost daring you to sit down and prove yourself. Behind it, the game’s leaderboard spills out in garish blues, whites, and yellows, with Spa Francorchamps’ familiar curves just visible on the left. There’s a pleasing layering here — the physical hardware in the foreground, the flickering digital world in the back — a reminder that the tactile and the virtual have always been intertwined in gaming.

Technically, it’s a tricky shot. The low-light environment of an arcade means juggling exposure to keep the screen from blowing out while still pulling detail from the darker foreground. Here, the balance mostly holds: the background is legible without being washed, and the wheel’s textured surface is visible despite the dim light. The saturation pops just enough to evoke the arcade atmosphere without sliding into cartoonish oversaturation.

Depth is naturally shallow in a scene like this, but the photographer uses it to advantage, letting the wheel’s details anchor the image while the background floats in a slight haze — a hint at the machine’s depth and the world it promises inside.

It’s not a glamour shot of gaming culture, but it doesn’t try to be. This is an ode to the stubborn, slightly battered resilience of the arcade cabinet: still ready to take your coins, still flashing its lights, still insisting that this time, you’ll make the leaderboard.