Drive QVGA lcd with GPIO?
Yes. If it has an 8080 interface, that means it has a built in controller (which is quite common for these sorts of screens). You can write data to it at your leisure, basically. The only consideration is that you need to have enough GPIO to drive the interface.

If you want to do animations or complex graphics, then you will need a fast microcontroller because it will be spending a lot of time bit bashing the interface. This is why it can make sense to use a chip with an FSMC (memory controller). It means your CPU can focus on generating graphics, rather than driving the interface.