Melee is widely regarded int he community as much better than the successors, too, and it's pretty much the only game that survived its sequel in the whole series

Yeah I've played more Mario Kart than Smash Bros. and am only a very-casual player of either (... but this surely describes the overwhelming majority of people buying and playing these games?) so I wouldn't claim with some kind of authority that Melee's the best Smash Bros., but all the ones since have felt way too fiddly for me and I didn't enjoy them at all, despite really liking the first two entries in the series (and especially Melee).

Another case where my "nostalgia" one is the N64 game, not Melee, so I don't think it's a nostalgia thing making me prefer the Gamecube version.