So is there a minimum quality or can it just be a video taken from my phone since im lazy and dont want to get out my decent camera or mess around with a timer

For NES? You're better off using an emulator if you don't wanna bother with a capture card. I've accepted phone recordings on https://www.speedrun.com/gradiusgalaxies/run/mkd3533y for instance since DS capture is hard and expensive to comeby these days, not to mention emulation for it is not the greatest.

NES on the other hand have better options. If you're telling me your potato pc is incapable of NES emulation, we can start to discuss it at that point. But most computers should be able to emulate 8-bit systems without issue.

I would myself much rather play on my console and record it externally with my phone or something. Nothing wrong with emulators, but if I have a console I'm going to use it. With that said - it's quite easy to make sure phone recordings are properly visible with some lights and a stable tripod etc, and if you go that far you might as well go pick up your decent camera or order a cheap capture card :)

ok, im only good on the normal controllers so i want to use a capture card. ill look around for one, thanks for the info