alt Hacker Newsoh man <map> and <area> yes kids today just don't know the pain we went through.
this is back when every single byte mattered and saving a few MB was the difference between a good user experience and a bad one.
for those that never used this, you would do something like
<img src="funnycats.jpg" usemap="#funnycats-map">
<!-- the map defines clickable zones --> <map name="funnycats-map"> <shape="rect" coords="34,44,270,350" href="cats.html"> </map>
most ppl used something like Dreamweaver but bad-asses would do their own coordinates.
My web dev experience began right before ES6, when browsers still did not do parallel asset loads and so spritesheets were common
Why could you not have defined elements overlayed using high z index that were clickable, like invisible divs?