The New minecraft Launcher refuses to allow me to even play lower versions this has been going on for weeks. and It's still not fixed, and I still can't play

Since these new version of minecraft came out, i've been having huge issues trying to playing the older versions again, I can't even play them. I click launch, it downlaods it, show mojang, Poof crashes. Here's my crash log. Please help me.

Minecraft Crash Report ----
// This doesn't make any sense!
Time: 1/30/17 1:02 AM
Description: Failed to start game
java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.io.Reader.<init>(Reader.java:78)
at java.io.InputStreamReader.<init>(InputStreamReader.java:97)
at bp.a(SourceFile:64)
at bp.a(SourceFile:100)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.a(SourceFile:252)
at avv.a(SourceFile:56)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.run(SourceFile:507)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)