What sort of compatibility issues? Most packages update to work with new Node releases fairly quickly. Usually the packages that have compatibility issues are ones with native C++ bindings. If you `npm rm` the package and reinstall it, it will usually build correctly for the latest Node/V8 release.

Further, if you have a project that for whatever reason is not feasible to update to run on modern Current Node, you can use `nvm` or `n` to choose which Node release you want to use: i.e. `nvm exec 0.12 node old-project.js` and `nvm exec 6.0 node fresh-project.js`. v6 (and the versions that preceded it) has made Javascript really enjoyable to write.