Kai Cenat is getting ready for Grand Theft Auto VI by replaying almost everything that came before it. The Twitch star announced on X that he will stream five mainline Grand Theft Auto games back to back, starting November 5 at 3 PM EST, two weeks before the new game arrives.
He kept it short. "PLAYING GTA 3, VICE CITY, SAN ADREAS, 4 & 5 ALL ON STREAM NOVEMBER 5TH 3PM EST," he posted, then followed up with a one-word correction, "Andreas," to fix the typo. In release order that is Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V, a run across more than twenty years of the series.
The marathon is personal for him. Cenat explained in a livestream that GTA: Vice City was the first game in the series he played as a kid living in Brooklyn, handed to him by his stepfather. He remembers starting on a motorbike with Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" playing and has said the game changed his life. He has also admitted he free-roamed titles like GTA: San Andreas as a kid without ever finishing their stories, so the marathon is a chance to go back and do it properly.
Whether this is truly one nonstop sitting is another question. Finishing the stories of all five will take a lot of time, so expect breaks even if he bills it as a continuous run. Either way, Cenat has proven that he has the stamina for it, with past endurance streams behind him.
The classic run is a warm-up for something bigger. Cenat has said for more than a year that he will stream GTA 6 start to finish for 100 percent completion when it launches, going past Jason and Lucia's main story into side content and collectibles, with no set end time. He has avoided leaks and spoilers to keep that playthrough pure, so the five-game marathon is his way of getting into the right headspace first.
Kai Cenat's pre-GTA 6 marathon lineup
Game | Released | Note |
|---|---|---|
Grand Theft Auto III | 2001 | The game that launched the 3D era |
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | 2002 | Cenat's first GTA, played as a kid in Brooklyn |
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas | 2004 | He free-roamed it young without finishing the story |
Grand Theft Auto IV | 2008 | Niko Bellic's Liberty City |
Grand Theft Auto V | 2013 | The best-seller he closes the run on |
Five games, more than twenty years, one stream before the sixth arrives.
Cenat is not alone in going back. A wave of creators is replaying the classics before November 19, from Typical Gamer's return to his GTA roots to TGG's months-long GTA marathon. This is all part of something we had already predicted before as GTA 6 sucks up the entire world's attention with streamers cashing in on the hype.
To that end, Rockstar Games has quietly been following a small army of streamers ahead of the game's November 19 launch, while Twitch builds GTA 6 features with the studio.
For Cenat, it starts with the game that started it all for him. He is going back to Vice City on November 5, decades after a motorbike and a Michael Jackson track hooked him as a kid.