Only the PlayStation 2 version of the game includes proper shadows for the dinosaurs and guests. In earlier versions, shadows were originally apart of all entities (which also includes buildings and foliage) in at least the PC version of the game.

The final version of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis includes only 25 dinosaur species. However, the development team had originally hoped to include 40 species very early on, with many of them implied to be sea-dwelling and flying creatures. Ultimately, this was whittled down to the 25 dinosaurs seen in the final game due to time constraints, and also the developers wanting to focus on creating fewer, but more interesting dinosaurs, as opposed to a larger number of less interesting dinosaurs. As such, they decided to make the dinosaurs they had count and focus on species that players would recognize from the films.

The development team for this game experimented with baby dinosaurs midway through the project, attempting to use schemes such as scaling the adult dinosaurs down to make them infants. The team realized that this didn't look right and that making proper infant dinosaurs would require new models and AI, which would be similar to the work required for adding more dinosaur species. As a result, baby dinosaurs were dropped, along with any ideas for a "Dino Petting Zoo".

The now defunct Jurassic Park Institute website featured what appeared to be an unused 3D model of a Chasmosaurus for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis. This would line up with the developer's comments about wanting to include more dinosaur species outside of the 25 present in the final game, although curiously, this species is not mentioned within the game's "Constant.ini" file, which mentions dozens of other unused dinosaur species.

The design of this game's park entrance differs depending on what platform and also what graphics setting you're playing on. On the higher graphical settings on PC, it is modeled after the Visitor Center from the movie and also incorporates the traditional iconic Jurassic Park gate. On consoles and also on lower graphical settings on PC, it instead features a far smaller and compact building instead of the Visitor Center, and the Jurassic Park gate's design is modified to also include the Tyrannosaurus skeleton emblem iconic to the series, surrounded by a bundle of ferns.

The "Constant.ini" file found within this game's files mention a whole slew of additional dinosaurs not found in the final game, lining up with how the developers mentioned in an interview how they initially planned on including more species beyond the 25 included in the final product:

• Alioramus
• Apatosaurus
• Baryonyx
• Deinonychus
• Diplodocus
• Iquanodon
• Maiasaura
• Ornithomimus
• Panoplosaurus
• Tenontosaurus
• Thescelosaurus
• Wuerhosaurus
• Yangchuanosaurus

Interestingly, out of this batch, the Iquanodon is the only dinosaur to have any more data pertaining to it with its own "Iguan.ini" file, which makes it the only cut species with a known Length (Aprox. 9 Meters Long), Health (500), Life Span (4 Years and 6 Months), and Herd Size (1-15 Individuals). It also had a known attack damage (150), which would have it made it the strongest Ornithopod in the game had it been included.

At the time of its release, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis had managed to include nearly every on-screen prehistoric species found in the movies released up to that point (Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III), with only three notable exceptions:

• Pteranodon (featured in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III)
• Compsognathus (featured in The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III)
• Mamenchisaurus (featured in The Lost World: Jurassic Park)

Of these, the developers had mentioned they wanted to include flying reptiles earlier on in development but had to scrap them. In regards to Compsognathus, it was reportedly ruled out due to making gameplay difficult, because of their small size making them hard for players to see.

At some point, forest fires were one of the many disasters that could occur in the player's parks. There was also a Sprinkler System that was planned as an upgrade for structures in-game that would have been used to mitigate the aforementioned forest fires. All of this would be removed in the final game.

This game had two working titles before the final Operation Genesis subtitle was instated: "Jurassic Park: Project Genesis" and "Jurassic Park: The Game".

In an interview with the developers at Blue Tongue, they mentioned several buildings they wanted to include in this game, but had to drop due to design decisions or memory constraints on home consoles:

• Hotels, which would provide extra accommodation for guests.
• Dino-Vet Station, which would have been vital for keeping dinosaurs healthy.
• Hunting Platforms, which would let visitors hunt down carnivores in the park from afar.

The Dino-Vet Station can be found in earlier promotional material for Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis and also within its game files. Likewise with the Hunting Platform, which also still has Audio, Ini and even Rig Files within the game.

The Kentrosaurus notably has a unique quirk in that it will panic if placed in the same enclosure with other large herbivores, barring some exceptions like the Stegosaurus. This is in contrast with the Prima guidebook that makes no mention of this behavior and even recommends to house the Kentrosaurus with all other herbivores in the game, which suggests that this was either a glitch or an oversight on the development team's part.