So, leaving 3 hours of travel time to and from Manhattan (to be safe, since it's a weekend) and arriving 3 hours prior to departure, you'll have 2 hours to explore the city. Maybe 3 if you're very lucky. I guess you have to decide if that's worth it.
The Virtual Boy was released on July 21, 1995 (1995-07-21) in Japan and on August 16, 1995 (1995-08-16) in North America with the launch titles Mario's Tennis, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer, and Galactic Pinball. It was not released in PAL markets.
However, credit for the first online virtual world usually goes to Habitat, developed in 1987 by LucasFilm Games for the Commodore 64 computer, and running on the Quantum Link service (the precursor to America Online).