While hunting down some strange additional extra lives that weren't accounted for previously, I noticed that all these extra lives seemed to extend past the end of the level. What I didn't expect is that there was actually more level behind the end of level trigger! It's almost completely functional (there's a non-functioning electricity gate, and the moving platform control boards are ridiculously slippery) and yet just... not accessible normally. Perhaps the developers figured the level was too long and hard already, and slapped down an end of level trigger a couple of rooms early as a last second stopgap measure, which would explain the level ending before even reaching the final pink platform.

Video of this extra piece of level here.

To visit it yourself, load up 8-A (don't move Yellow), open Cheat Engine, search for the array of bytes A2 70 92 C1 14 A1 C7 C4 77 A8 F0 C2 and replace it with 02 C9 82 45 5F A1 16 47 19 5C 90 43 Keep in mind that going any further backwards than this will hit the end of level trigger because it is very big.

This is really cool!

It's funny, whenever I was recording videos showing ways to get out of bounds, I actually managed to find this extra section of level, but I somehow didn't notice that it was unused! I guess that I'm so used to the Zones in Level 8 being so long and looking pretty much the same that it just slipped by me!

So you did! That's pretty hilarious that you didn't even realize you discovered something this big, the level really does drag on huh... That's probably why they decided to end it early, in the end. Turns out the missing lives were under our noses the whole time!