N64 Region Differences
NTSC-U was the first version released and thus is the fastest with the most glitches. NTSC-J and PAL were released later with PAL being the last released with the most patches. All tricks patched on JP were carried over to PAL with PAL having more patches.
Patches in PAL / JP
When taking damage trying to do a clockwork warp it will fail unless you do it on 1 specific frame, making them not viable. However clockwork warps where you break the clockwork with the grenade still work, an example is the Oogle Boogle warp. These warps have been dubbed “PAL warps”
This Switch is a solo Banjo switch as that is the intended way to get this jiggy, however it can be opened as Banjo-Kazooie on NTSC-U and J. On PAL it only opens with solo Banjo as it was intended and thus is necessary to take Solo Banjo across to get the jiggy as Egg barging was patched.
almost all forms of collecting items through walls through various means, (Egg shot, Egg barge, Skew, Swimming (In the case of Weldar’s Toxic Waste Jiggy)) The exception to this is Pecking or Beak barging notes/empty Honeycombs, those still work. Do note you can still get skew, but it is useless.
The height gain trick of rubbing against slopes in water does not work.
When leaving bottles house there is a small cutscene that shows Jiggywiggy’s temple. These versions actually ALLOW you to skip it which is good, saving about 10 seconds.
After seeing Mumbo the first time where you have to go to the top level to speak to him, every other Mumbo visit after that you can speak to him from the bottom level on NTSC-U, this was patched, you must go to the top every time.
On NTSC-U after you screw the first and last bolts for platforms in Grunty Industries there is a cutscene that shows the platform shaking and then falling down. When you do this you can move and jump to prepare to unscrew the next bolt, however this was changed and the game freezes you before these cutscenes play.
When doing this glitch you do not get a cursor to shoot on these versions.
Some loading zone properties were changed and the Triple Banjo glitch doesn’t work.
PAL Quirks
Due to PAL region hardware differences and TV standards during the late 90s, PAL copies of N64 games run at 25FPS instead of the faster NTSC copies which run at 30FPS. In order to compensate for this, Banjo games compensate for any lag you experience until the frame rate reaches 20FPS. Once you create enough lag for the game to run at 19FPS or less, you will end up losing real time to this lag.
Due to lag calculations on PAL Banjo jumps slightly lower (~10 units or equal to about 1 pixel) This makes doing some precise beak busts to skip grabbing ledges difficult, but they are all possible. The hardest beak bust is plateau early which only works if you turn the camera a certain way to increase lag.
NTSC-J Quirks
Text is a little bit slower on NTSC-J. In the Hag 1 fight for example which is full of unskippable text you lose about 5 seconds.
Xbox Differences
There is only 1 Xbox version of Banjo-Tooie that is based off the PAL version of the game in terms of glitches, however the frame rate consistently runs at 30FPS so you save time over all versions of N64 but especially PAL N64. (ironic because this version is based off PAL) Loading times are also much faster with most being instant.
It is currently unknown if this version uses the same distance calculation coded that makes the height go slightly lower.
In terms of text the Japanese text is actually faster for Xbox. All skippable text that uses L + R + B does not work, only text skipped with just B still works (jamjars except for the last, Dragon Bros, Jongo, Mumbo, Wumba etc.) as the L button was not mapped to the N64 L Button.
Patches in the Xbox Release
This version inherited all patches from the PAL version, hitbox extensions, detonator levitator, regular clockwork warps etc, but also has one new patch.
Xbox cannot get in and out of the jelly castle as the Bee, you must use the intended method (Shack Pack).
Summary
N64 NTSC-U is the fastest for speedrunning every Banjo-Tooie category except for Any%, Cheato%, and Low%, which are faster on NTSC-J. The reason is because of the ability to skip the JiggyWiggy cutscene saving 10 seconds, however because of the slower Japanese text you lose 5 seconds in Hag 1, saving 5 seconds total. None of the tricks patched are used in this run so JP works.