Lizstar

Oh there are, a lot. I can't remember everything but the standout ones to me are:

• you can clip through most walls with some combination of swimming, first person camera, rubbing your back on it, or lag (oranges cause a lot of lag for this purpose)
• DK can go flying if you jump and kick off of certain inclines and ledges with specific timing so it interrupts the mid-air attack animation with the kick
• swimming out of bounds into some areas will offset the player model's pitch, which breaks collisions even further
• actually any amount of lag just completely throws off most of the game, since Rare added in compensation but all it does is make the player move farther per frame without adding collision checks or adjusting any other part of the physics. this is actually why some parts of the game were way harder on Wii U VC; the game lagged constantly on N64 but runs very close to its intended frame rate on Wii U, so things like the beetle race in Fungi Forest became nearly impossible

It's possible to get around nearly every intended obstacle or trigger in the game, and when I replay it I usually try to clip around and see where I can get in the game without grabbing vital collectibles or abilities. It's as much a part of my love for the game as playing through it intentionally.

Plus it was the only Rare collectathon on 64 that I completed 101%. I couldn't finish Banjo-Kazooie because the note score system made it feel necessary to finish every world in one go, and Tooie's backtracking frustrated me because I could never finish a world before moving onto the next. (Still love both those games too tho)

you know in retrospect it is possible that i only feel the way i do about it because i've played it a million times :p i do find it easier than other 3d platformers but i might just be really attuned to how it controls specifically? like i think mario 64 is way harder, for example.

BETTER THAN SM64 that's a take for sure.

I need to replay Kazooie, see if I can get through it without immense motion sickness.

yeah i find 1 to be pretty okay, whereas 2 feels like a refinement on the original with a bit more flourish and scope. you might like it, you might not, if that's the case? there is at least some learning curve involved but the hint system in single player (though the hints themselves are a little brief,) helps pave that over a bit

For sure. I remember replying Superstar Saga for the boss fights and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the Bowser interludes. Played the solo arenas in the Golden Sun games a ton too. The boss fights there were random but super hard in later rounds.