I don't think this argument has been said before, so here is my take.
A TAS is a superplay, which sometimes takes death as a short cut. Death may or may not cause a warping of some kind, but either way this is acceptable.
I do not think that resetting the whole system should be acceptable, because it doesn't seem as though a Perfect Dark TAS is a "Perfect Dark Super Play" i.e playing the game from start to finish in one sitting and one power on.
An example of resetting where I believe is acceptable is
X-men where resetting does not change the state of the game (by using a soft reset, in this case, brings up an error message like that in DOS.) The game is still running, as a single-powered on run to complete the game.
The way we are talking about this run makes me feel like it should be billed as individual level run, NOT a TAS of the
whole game, in its entirety.
Hopefully my argument made some sense, 'cause I can picture my argument in my head but I sure as hell can't write it down >_>