That’s kind of a strange complaint, given that there’s always so many complaints about Nintendo ruining core gameplay mechanics in sequels. Lots of us want sequels as long as the gameplay loop hasn’t changed much beyond adding a few new features. I would kill for another Paper Mario with PPM 64/Thousand Year Door mechanics but they’re just straight up averse to doing exactly what you’re accusing them of for a lot of their game series.
Not that I’m advocating for super in-depth tutorials or anything, but comparing the complexity of SMB to something like Pikmin is a bit disingenuous. In the former your options for inputs are run and jump, which is a lot less than having to corral little plant dudes using a whistle and splitting them up/using them for specific purposes.
Having said that I think the best compromise is to have a tutorial that tells you what you can do/what buttons do what without making you actually do those things just to check if you’re too dumb to understand simple instructions. Also space out the instructions so that they happen while actually playing the game instead of in one big tutorial section right at the beginning.
For ebay prices are sometimes meaningless unless you filter by “sold items”. But yeah looks like they’re going for around $100-$170