Ruskul Sorry I didn't mean to avoid your points I just started to write the post before you added that in .
I get what you are saying but in my opinion your problem relates to how you think about game design in general. I'm not saying you are doing something wrong (you seem very knowledgeable), I am just saying where you have trained yourself to think in code - I think in events instead.
It is true that you can't make a perfect replication of mario with platformer + solid behaviour alone, the behaviours are lacking if you think about it that way. My point is though that the behaviours haven't been designed to allow you to make mario with only the platformer and solid behaviour. If they were then we would be stepping into cookie cutter land. When I build games I use the behaviours if they will save me time but I go into it knowing the limits (and when I reach them I just fill the gap with custom events).
I agree that it's not always a simple process of porting over existing code to a new project (I mean it's not hard, it is just tedious at times). This could be lessened by being consistent with template object names (for example the player object is always called player etc).
I think we are comparing apples and oranges, for me the event system beats traditional coding in terms of speed and ease of use. Again, just my opinion but I think once you are more familiar with the event system you would feel the same.
Maybe Mario would be a good start for a community template.