If you want to use this style, you will need to make an SMF For Free forum here, however you will have to wait because he currently has forum registrations redirected to Create A Forum (as you said).
No there is no way to change the version,
Simple Machines Forum has different versions of their software, but currently, SMF For Free uses their latest stable version, which is 1.1.11
2.0 RC3 is said to be very stable but since there were many different things added to it it has to be released very carefully.