Replication - Compatibility issue

I was working on a POC concept for my client to test some replication functionality and got the below error,

"he selected subscriber does not satisfy the minimum version compatibility level"

I was using SQL Server 2008 as a distributor and Publisher and SQL Server 2012 as subscriber to mimic my client environment and i was using Developer edition to carry out my test.  I very well know the version and edition i was using supports replication. Finally after some research i found i was using SQL 2008R2 SSMS to set up my subscriber with was the cause of the mismatch, once i switched to SQL2012 SSMS everything was running fine. After this i did a testing with SQL 2012,SQL 2014 and SQL2016 similarly using publisher a one level below the subscriber and all the version failed with the same error when i use the lower version ssms. Hope the information helps.