This paper presents a new approach to the design of prescribed performance adaptive control for uncertain horizontal platform systems with the finite-time convergence. Following an appropriate performance function and error transformation, a new adaptive control law is proposed by using a novel integral non-singular terminal sliding mode surface. The proposed approach simultaneously guarantees that (i) the transient responses of the closed-loop system possess some advanced properties such as the existence of the prespecified lower bound of the convergence rate and of the pre-established upper bound of the maximum overshoot; and (ii) the finite-time convergence of the state trajectories/tracking errors to zero. The global stability and finite-time convergence are strictly analyzed. The proposed method is clarified and verified through two numerical simulation examples. (C) 2020 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.