Treasure worked on both Gunstar Heroes and McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure at the same time, and in the end Gunstar Heroes would release before McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. The latter game, however, was actually developed and completed first, but Treasure wanted their debut game to be an original title.

In prototype versions of McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, the shops were McDonald's restaurants, and all the meters and power-ups in the game were McDonald's products. McDonald's burgers as health items in a game could be seen as endorsing them as a healthy food, so it was likely changed for the final game to avoid this perception, and while at the time Ronald McDonald was still seen holding or eating McDonald's in advertising, in later years he would be mandated against doing either. Additionally, a developer from the game has claimed that McDonald's were opposed to the collectibles because they didn't want hamburgers being left on the ground.

In the Japanese and European versions of McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure, one of the enemies was a racially insensitive portrayal of an African tribesman. This design was changed to a robot in the US version of the game.

In the April 2021 issue of the magazine Retro Gamer, Treasure's president Masato Maegawa revealed that entering a specific password on the game's password screen would allow access to a secret "polygonal display". After searching through the game's code and many brute-forced attempts, the method to access the display was eventually discovered:

Enter the password (shown in the attached picture) "Balloons", "Jewel", "M" and "Clown". Then, press Start three times until you hear the sound of an explosion and quickly hold Up+Left and wait. If done correctly, the McDonald's Password sign will turn from a 2D sprite into a 3D model, and the music will change to a song that sounds eerier than the normal password screen music.

Controls:
• D-Pad = Rotates the model
• B and C buttons = Zooms in and zooms out the model respectively
• Holding A and using the D-Pad = Moves the object across the background
• Holding A and pressing C = Switches the current object with a different one.

The viewable 3D polygonal models in this mode include the McDonald's Password sign, several cubes and squares of varying sizes and dimensions, the box in the Treasure logo, the "S" in the Sega logo, the entire Sega logo as a separate flat model, and a spaceship.

In the US version of the game, the magic power up item's graphic is changed. This is possibly due in part to the visual similarities the other localized version's icon has to a sperm.