In this paper, an adaptive dynamic surface control scheme is proposed for a class of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear time-varying systems. By fusing a bound estimation approach, a smooth function and a time-varying matrix factorisation, the obstacle caused by unknown time-varying parameters is circumvented. The proposed scheme is free of the problem of explosion of complexity and needs only one updated parameter at each design step. Moreover, all tracking errors can converge to predefined arbitrarily small residual sets with a prescribed convergence rate and maximum overshoot. Such features result in a simple adaptive controller which can be easily implemented in applications with less computational burden and satisfactory tracking performance. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.