New React Native project with old version of react native

Use the --version flag.

react-native init blank --version [email protected]

rninit is a replacement for react-native init that allows you to specify a particular version of react-native to use.

Install rninit globally:

npm install -g rninit

Specify which version of react-native to use:

rninit init [Project Name] --source [email protected]

Thanks to @vanson-wing-leung for pointing me to rninit

There is a new parameter in react-native init that allows just this. Try:

react-native init --version="[email protected]" MyNewApp

Here my source. I have successfully tested it with react-native-cli 2.0.1.