Monkey

A recurring animal companion in the Survival Kids series who assists the player in surviving on a deserted island.

Games

1999–2000

Years

Platforms

About

In the 1999 Game Boy Color game Survival Kids (released as Stranded Kids in Europe), the Monkey is a wild animal that the player can befriend. Once befriended, the Monkey acts as a helpful companion, assisting the protagonist by gathering items and reaching otherwise inaccessible areas. The character also appears in related titles by Victor Interactive Software, including Legend of the River King (2000).

To secure the animal's trust in Survival Kids, players must offer it specific food items, transitioning the creature from a passive background element into an active gameplay participant. This interaction introduces a tamed-animal mechanic that became a recurring element in Victor Interactive Software's portable titles. The bond is quantified through an invisible friendship gauge, which dictates the success rate of the creature's actions.

Within the broader franchise ecosystem, this character represents the mechanical crossover between the Survival Kids series and the Legend of the River King series. During the Game Boy Color era, Victor Interactive Software frequently shared assets and design philosophies between these two intellectual properties. In Legend of the River King, the character serves as a bridge between the fishing and survival genres, appearing in specific environments to interact with the angler protagonist. The character's design and utility laid the groundwork for more complex companion systems in the Japan-only sequel Survival Kids 2 and the subsequent Lost in Blue spiritual successors on the Nintendo DS, where animal taming and cooperative exploration were expanded into core survival mechanics.